Those Who Fight
by Malochroma
Summary: Down the hatch and into the freezer. When River Yu Samson stumbles out of Vault 111 and into the Commonwealth in search of her lost son, she needs to learn how to redefine both herself and her idea of what's "normal" in this crazy new world. Danse/F!Sole Survivor.
1. Like the One Before

**A/N: So, I know I've stil got my TES IV fanfic ("Aegis and Arcane," for the interested) to write, but I've been getting really into Fallout 4 and I started to get into my character's personality and how she handles the world around her and then one thing led to another and now I guess I'm working on two fics at the same time now. Okay. I can handle that.**

 **Please feel free to leave a review; I'm always eager to hear your thoughts and feedback!**

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 **Chapter One – Like the One Before**

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"River?"

"Nnn?"

"River, come on, sweetie, it's time to get up."

"Nnnnnn."

"You can't stay in bed all day, hon."

"Nnnnwatch me."

A few moments of contemplative silence, following be the creaking of the bed and the shifting of blankets. There are a few more moments of silence before…

 _BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP._

River Yu Samson lurches away from the alarm clock that has been placed right next to her ear, forgetting her precarious sleeping spot right at the edge of the bed until the moment just before she hits the ground with a _thoomp_. She glares up at her husband, who is sitting on the bed with a wry smirk plastered across his handsome features. "You think you're funny, don't you?" she pouts.

Dark eyes gleaming, Nate flashes on of his most charming smiles at her. "I don't know," he says, "am I?"

"…Yeah, kinda." Rivers pushes herself into a sitting position, a tricky feat given how she is still entangled in the blankets that she had accidentally pulled down with her during her little tumble. "Was that how they woke you back in the military?"

"Nah." Nate slides off the bed and joins her on the floor, propping his head up against the heel of his hand. His dark brown hair is damp and sticking to his forehead; he always does like to get his showers in as early as possible. "The drill sergeant got me out of the habit of sleeping in real quick back in basic. You'd be surprised how fast your internal clock adjusts after the fifth time you have to scrub down the showers with a toothbrush." He shoots her a look. "Hey, babe?"

"Hm?"

"You're pretty."

River scoffs. "No one looks pretty right after waking up."

"You do." Nate leans forward and kisses her on the nose. "Come on. We've got that dinner at the Veteran's Hall tonight, remember? Already got my shower done and I just need to shave, so you can hop in at any time."

"All right, all right. Just give me a minute, m'kay?" River returns the kiss, this time on Nate's lips. "Love you."

"Love you, too." Nate pulls himself up off the floor and makes his way to the bathroom. After a few seconds, River begins to disentangle herself from the sheets. In the other rooms, she can hear the quiet bustle that has become synonymous with "home": Nate humming along to the radio in the bathroom as he shaves, the clinking of dishes in the kitchen as Codsworth prepares the morning breakfast, and Shaun's cooing in the bedroom opposite her and Nate's. She decides to check in on her son before getting herself cleaned up for the morning, crossing the hallway and leaning in to see Shaun laying in his crib, watching his mobile gently sway back and forth with rapt attention.

"Hey, there," River says softly, a wide grin stretching across her face. "How's my little man?" Shaun lets out a gleeful cry in response to his mother's voice. "That's good to hear!"

Shaun had been the very definition of a "happy accident" for the Samsons. Between Nate having only just left the military at the time, River's boxing career – pregnancy and boxing didn't exactly go hand in hand – and the rising societal prejudice against Chinese-American citizens such as herself, the talk of starting a family never went beyond just that: talk. But despite all that, the two of them had wanted children so badly, and their first response to the news was not apprehension but unbridled joy; Nate had been so excited that he'd instantly gone out to buy a crib as soon as he'd heard. (River had to remind him that the baby wasn't due for some time yet.)

Now, looking at her infant son, River cannot help but be grateful that he is a part of her life. It isn't always going to be this easy or idyllic; she sees the glares the Whitfields give her every day there's a new report about the war, and she hears the talk on the radio about the internment camps. But this, right here? This life, this family, _her_ family... it's worth it, and she'll fight through anything to keep it.

From across the hall, Nate calls out, "You gonna shower, babe?"

River doesn't realize just how long she has been standing there in the doorway being a sentimental sap until he speaks. "Uh, yeah, gimme a moment!" she replies, darting back into their bedroom to quickly grab a clean set of clothes before making her way over to the bathroom and into the shower.

She remains in said shower for a bit longer than is probably necessary, the hot water pouring down across her head and shoulders a stark contrast to the late October chill that has seeped into the rest of the house. When she clambers back out, the air in the bathroom is heavy with steam, and Nate is wiping a layer of fog off of the mirror. There is a rare look in her husband's eyes, a heavy look of contemplation and underlying sorrow as he examines his reflection. "War," he sighs, "war never changes."

"Going over your speech for tonight?" River asks, reaching for the towel so she can dry off her hair.

Nate glances over his shoulder at her for a moment. "Hm? Oh, yeah. I feel like it would kind of ruin the whole tone if I ended up forgetting what I was saying, getting stage fright, and babbling about that time the entire base adopted a squirrel and named it Private Nuts."

"I still refuse to believe that happened."

"It did, I'm serious! Never did like having the little guy on base. Have you ever been stared at by a squirrel? Those things have _murder_ in their eyes, River!"

"Uh huh." River finishes patting down her hair and pulls her clothes on. Nothing too fancy just yet; just a simple blue blouse and a pair of khaki slacks. "You're gonna wow them tonight, honey," she says, walking over to her husband and wrapping her arms around him in a close embrace. She pressing her forehead against the center of his back, right between his shoulder blades. "I'm so proud of you, Nate. You know that, right?"

Nate's hand lands on her forearm, sliding across until he finds her own hand and gives it a grateful squeeze. "Thanks, honey," he says, his voice tender. After a few moments of them just standing there, River holding him tightly in her embrace, he gives her hand a cheerful pat and goes right back to "cheerful morning person" Nate. "Come on. I gotta finish shaving."

"Aw, do you have to?" River leans upward to prop her chin up on Nate's shoulder. "I think you'd look cute with a bit of a beard."

"What, with this face? Nah, I can't pull of the scruffy look."

"You don't know that," she teases. "I can imagine you with a bit of stubble, all _rugged_ and _brimming_ with testosterone..."

Nate laughs. River loves his laugh; it's loud and a little breathy and always goes on for a few seconds longer than you think it's going to. "I don't think the lumberjack look would work for me, honey. Maybe _you_ could, though." He reaches back to poke at her biceps for emphasis. "My tiny buff little wife, chopping trees and fighting bears."

"Pffft." Now it was River's turn to laugh, stifling her giggles into Nate's shoulders. "I don't wanna fight _bears_ , Nate. Okay, yes I do, but _come on_." She pulled away, giving Nate the room he needed to get back to shaving clean the shadow of stubble that graced his jawline. To their right, the radio balancing precariously on the shelf above the toilet began to play a familiar little tune, followed only moments later by Nate contentedly humming along. _It's all over but the crying…_

River reaches around him and grabs one of her hair ties off the sink counter. "I'm gonna go get my makeup on and get something to eat," she says, pulling her hair back into its usual bun as she makes way towards the bathroom door. "You'd better hurry up and join me. Codsworth won't be happy if you let the coffee get cold." At the mention of breakfast, her stomach gives out a sharp growl, and she barely waits for Nate's hum of acknowledgement before she is out the door and in the kitchen. As soon as she enters, the seductive smell of fresh toast and coffee hits her nose, alongside the sounds of dishes being moved and the comforting whir of the Mr. Handy hard at work at the kitchen counter. "Morning, Codsworth."

At the sound of her voice, the Mr. Handy pauses in his work, one of his three eyestalks spinning about to focus on her. "Oh, good morning, Miss River!" he replies, his British voice alight with the perpetual cheerfulness that most domestic Handies were famous for. "Is Master Nathan awake as well?"

"Yeah, he's getting himself cleaned up." River sits down at the counter. "You have a nice night?" Codsworth didn't sleep the same way she or Nate did, instead going into a low-power mode while he kept an eye on the house and on Shaun.

"Oh, splendid as always, ma'am, thank you for asking!" Codsworth gestures to a pair of steaming coffee mugs resting on the counter, alongside a copy of the Boston Bugle and an issue of Grognak the Barbarian. (Pure male-fantasy fluff, but River can't help but love it.) "The morning newspaper and today's coffee. One hundred-seventy-three point five degrees Fahrenheit; brewed to perfection! Your breakfast shall be ready momentarily as well."

"Agh, you're an _angel_ , Codsworth." River reaches for one of the cups of coffee. As she brings it to her lips, the smell and the heat radiating from the heavy black liquid hits her senses like a baseball bat of wakefulness. She takes a quick sip, ignoring the way the heat bites at her tongue in favor of the bittersweet taste. No cream, just how she liked it.

"Always happy to help, ma'am!"

"Mm, thank you. By the way, do you know where my foundation compact is? Gotta make sure I have all my makeup together for tonight." She brushes her knuckles against her right cheek to feel the ridged and puckered skin running in a thin line down the side of her face. She has several scars from various accidents at the gym, from the one crossing the curve of her prominent cheekbone that leads right into the one curving around the edge of her eyebrow, to the one right the bridge of her nose, to the tiny cluster of scars at the left corner of her lip that always caused her smile to be a little bit crooked. It wasn't that she was ashamed of her scars; on the contrary, she often enjoyed telling the story of how Tatiana South had come in drunk and had accidentally tossed a five-weight at her face when she'd intended to throw a water bottle. (That was how she'd gotten the scar on her cheek.) But there was only so many times she could deal with the same questions over and over again, and eventually it just became easy to liberally apply some foundation over the scars than answer them.

Seriously, she doesn't need condolences for some tragic car crash that never happened or people who don't know what they were talking about asking about how her marriage was with painfully transparent implications laced into every word. She got hit in the face with a _lifting weight_. Twice. And got nicked in the lip from when the new kid was being a dumbass with a butterfly knife. So it's just easier to cover it up.

"Hmm. I don't believe I do. Have you checked in your dresser recently?" Codsworth answers, turning back to the open jar of orange marmalade on the counter, no doubt for the toast River was smelling. "You might have left it there yesterday when you were getting ready to go to the store."

A pair of sturdy arms wrap around River's waist, startling her. She twists around to look over her shoulder and sees Nate, pulling her close into a tight hug. "Worried about your scars?" he asks. Without waiting for an answer, he gentle kisses the one at her right temple and says, "If anyone's gonna have a problem with the way you look, they're gonna have a problem with me."

"They'd have a problem with me before anything," River mutters, leaning back against her husband's just and drinking in the warmth he radiated. "I will say this, though, I'm glad Shaun is shaping up to have _your_ chin. I don't know how well he'd fare with mine."

"Heh. Well, he's going to end up having your cheekbones." Nate releases her with a gentle pat on her hip and makes a beeline for his own cup of coffee, picking up the newspaper and flipping to the sports section as he does. For a couple of seconds, it's just the three of them, their coffee, and the serenity of the October morning. Soon, though, the silence is broken by Shaun beginning to cry in the other room. Maternal instincts kick in and River moves to go see what is wrong, but she's cut off by Codsworth. "Ah, sounds like someone made a stinky! Don't worry, ma'am, I shall attend to young Shaun!" He floats down the hallway into Shaun's room, and the crying soon subsides.

"You know, I know we were nervous at first, but I'm really glad we got Codsworth," Nate says. "I think Shaun likes him a lot, too."

"Yeah." River settles back onto the stool, taking another gulp of her coffee. Codsworth had been peace of mind; she'd worried about finding a reliable babysitter when the two of them inevitably had to return to work, and she especially worried about what would happen if there wasn't an emergency and she wasn't around to keep him safe. But General Atomics and RobCo had been parading their latest line of domestic Mister Handy robots as the perfect keeper of house, home, and family, so she and Nate had decided, what the hell?

Not once has she regretted it. She likes Codsworth's company; his jovial demeanor is infectious, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night it is more often than not the gentle whirring of his machinery that lulls her back to sleep. Their early concerns that Shaun would be scared by the constant jet propulsion that keeps the Mister Handy afloat were proved null and voice when he first got the hang of crawling and the first thing he did was make an immediately beeline for Codsworth, laughing all the way.

 _Plus, he makes a damn good pot of coffee_ , River thinks. "Brewed to perfection" indeed; she's not sure how Nate will be able to go back to workplace coffee. Hell, she's not sure how she'll be able to go back to the coffee Tatiana regularly brings to the gym, and that stuff was good. Well, better enjoy it while she ca—

 _Knock knock_.

"Nate, I'm going to punch whoever's at the door."

"What if it's Girl Scouts?"

"I'm going to punch whoever's at the door unless it's Girl Scouts. If it's Girl Scouts, I'm going to need you to find my wallet." River _very_ reluctantly stands up and makes her way to the door. Through the little window, she can see a red-haired man in a yellow trench coat and fedora, clinging to a clipboard as he stands at her doorway with a thin, plastic smile on his face. "Well, I guess I'm going to have to punch someone, because it's not Girl Scouts. It's some guy in a yellow coat." Asshole doesn't even have any cookies.

"Again? He's a salesman or a representative or something from… some company or another. He's been asking after you every day since Thursday. Something about your grandfather?"

River frowns. What did her granddad have to do with whatever this guy was selling? Welp, only one way to find out. She opens the door, meeting the salesman with a fake smile to match his own. "Yes, hello, can I help you?"

The man immediately perks up at the sight of her. "Good morning there! River Yu?"

"River Yu _Samson_ , yes." River flexes her left hand to prove a point, the light of sunrise catching off her wedding ring.

If the salesman was caught off-guard, he didn't show it. "Ah, excellent! I'm here to bring to your attention a little matter from Vault-Tec; preparing for your future!"

Vault-Tec. That's… "That's the company that's building all the shelters, right?" She'd first caught wind of them when the military started roping off areas near Sanctuary Hills, just across the stream. Guess that's what that's all about.

The salesman nods, his smile growing a little more genuine as he seems to recognize that she's not about to slam the door in his face. River wonders how many times he's had that happen to him over the course of his career. "Yes, ma'am! Vault-Tec is the foremost builder of state-of-the-art underground fallout shelters. Vaults, if you will. Luxury accommodations, where you can wait out the horrors of nuclear devastation!" His chipper attitude doesn't falter even at the mention of said nuclear annihilation. "You can't begin to imagine how happy I am to finally speak with you. I've been trying to for days. It's a matter of utmost emergency, I assure you."

Right. That's why he couldn't have spoken with her _husband_ , even to leave a message. "Well, uh. I'm here right now."

"Yes, you are!" the Vault-Tec salesman replies. "Now, I know you're a busy woman, so I won't take up much of your time. Time being a, um, precious commodity…" For a moment, his salesman act falters, and River sees a hint of concern swimming about in his green eyes. That gets her attention. If someone from the very company contracted to prepare for the possibility of disaster is concerned about limited time…

But it's only a moment, and soon he's back to his sales pitch. "I'm here today to tell you that because of your family's service to our country, you have been pre-selected for entrance into the local Vault: Vault 111!"

Okay. So that's why the topic of her grandfather came up. He'd served the military before the year she was born and the warring over resources had started, but he had still been a respected veteran and had quite a few stories under his belt. Still… "What about my husband?" River asks, leaning slightly against the door frame. "He's a military veteran, too." Behind her, she can hear the television flicker on and the familiar sound of the newscaster make its way throughout the house. Nate must be checking the news.

"I'm just doing what they asked of me," the salesman says, before flinching at the implications of his own words. "N-not that I'm not invested in seeing you receive the very best that we have to offer in terms of protection from devastation! It's just, what I mean is that Vault-Tec was specifically interested in your grandfather's service to America."

Well, that… sort of makes a little sense. A Chinese man serving in the American military would definitely catch a few people's attention, especially nowadays. "All right. But what about my family? I have a husband and a son, are there room for them?"

"Of course, of course!" the salesman replies. He nods to the inside of her house, where Codsworth could be heard trying to lull Shaun back to sleep. "Minus your robot, naturally. In fact," he adds as he flips through a couple papers on his clipboard, "you're already cleared for entrance. It's just a matter of clarifying some information four our records. Legal identification, medical history, things like that. We don't want there to be any hold-ups, in the event of, aheh, total atomic annihilation! Won't take but a moment." He holds the clipboard and a pen out to her expectantly, still smiling that same thin, anxious smile.

River glances over her shoulder at Nate, who is now sitting on the couch and listening in on the conversation. He shrugs noncommittally. _Fuck it._ "The apocalypse, hm?" River deadpans, holding out her hand. "Well, sign me the hell up."

The salesman beams. "Ha hah, that's the spirit!" he declares as he practically shoves the clipboard into her hands. "Now, just look over the forms and correct any mistakes or outdated information. And be honest! Vault-Tec needs to make sure everything is correct ensure your health and happiness!"

River can't help but note that this guy is laying it on a bit thick. They must be offering him a real doozy of a bonus for all of this, she thinks as she leafs through the various forms and paperwork. Everything looks to be up to date in terms of medical history. They even have her and Nate's date of marriage, which really makes her wonder why the Vault-Tec rep didn't know that she was married. Some sort of communication error along the line? _Still_ , she muses, _if Vault-Tec really is so interested in providing us with the best Vault service, you'd think they'd have kept their representatives better-informed. It's not exactly reassuring that they don't mention important details like "hey, this person's married to a military veteran."_ There isn't much information for Shaun; she fills it out as best she can and hands it all back to the representative (at this point, thinking of him as a "salesman" seems a bit inaccurate, as he's not actually trying to sell her anything). "Here you go."

"Wonderful!" the representative declares, backing away from the door. "That's everything. Just gonna walk this over to the Vault. Congratulations on being prepared for the futu—"

And that's as far as he gets before River gives him a polite nod and promptly shuts the door on him. "Congratulations on trying my patience," she mutters.

"Hey, it's piece of mind," Nate says from the couch. "That's worth dealing with a door-to-door guy for a couple of minutes."

"For you and Shaun, yeah. And I guess he wasn't _too_ bad. Probably has had to deal with a lot of cranky tired people, working this early in the morning." Looking at it, she wouldn't be surprised if she's been the only person who's given him the time of day today.

"You being one of those cranky tired people," Nate says, shifting over and patting the seat on the couch as an invitation for her to sit down. "I love you, honey, but you are _not_ a morning person."

River yawns. "I don't understand how _anyone_ can be. How do you manage being so damn chipper at six-thirty in the morning even before your first cup of coffee?"

Nate laughs. "Years of practice, babe."

"No doubt." She moves to go sit down next to him – some early morning couch-cuddles would _not_ go amiss – but is stopped in her tracks by the sound of Shaun crying again. "Codsworth?" she calls. "Everything okay?"

Codsworth comes floating out of Shaun's room. "Shaun has been changed, Miss River, but he absolutely refuses to calm down. I think he needs some of that 'maternal affection' that you're so good at."

"Uh, oh. I'm on it." River brushes past Codsworth on her way down the hall and steps into Shaun's room to find her son red-faced and wailing, flailing his tiny fists about at nothing in particular. "Hey, bud," she says as she approaches his crib. "What's the matter?" Shaun quiets down a little, his crying turning into hiccuped noises of discontent. River smiles down at him and reaches into his crib, allowing him to grab hold of her finger and pull on it with a surprisingly tight grip. "Yeah, don't worry, I'm here. Mommy's right here, see?

Shaun's mood does a one-eighty in the way only an infant's can and he begins to laugh, staring up at her with large, dark eyes. River laughs backs, shifting her way so that she is leaning against the bars of his crib ever so slightly. "There we go. Everything's all right now, see? Ooof, you've got a tight grip."

Nate's voice pipes up from behind her. "My little man's not giving his mom any trouble, is he?" River glances over her shoulder to see him leaning against the doorway, his arms loosely crossed over his chest. "I got the mobile fixed yesterday while you were out," he comments. "Why not give that a spin? He might calm down."

"You did? Thanks, hon. Okay, Shaun, you're going to have to let go of mommy, now. Come on." Shaun lets out a cry of frustration as River gently tugs her hand out of his grip, but he is quickly pacified as soon as she gets the mobile spinning, his gaze following the little rockets as they travel in circles to a gentle melody. River directs her next words to Nate. "He's been awfully cranky lately. Do you think something's wrong?"

Nate shakes his head. "Nah, I don't think so," he replies. "He might just be teething. It'd be about that time for him to start, wouldn't it? Have you found his pacifier yet?"

"No. We might want to pick up another one for him. Some teething rings, too, if that's what's been bugging him."

"I'll be sure to grab some the next time I'm down in Concord." Nate's gaze drifts over to the window, watching the sunlight filter through the orange and yellow leaves on the maple trees that dot the neighborhood. "You know, the news said that the weather's supposed to be pretty nice today. I was thinking that maybe the three of us could head on down to the park. Maybe have one last picnic before the weather gets too bad?"

It _is_ especially beautiful outside; there's not a cloud in the sky, and while there is was a child in the house when she woke up, she has no doubt that it will warm over the day. And heading down to the park meant getting to see all the Halloween decorations that their neighbors put up over the week in preparation for the holiday. "That sounds nice," River says. "Got any ideas for this picnic?"

"Eh, just the classics. Sandwiches, maybe some potato salad. We've still got that Nuka-Cola in the fridge, we can bring that along. There shouldn't be too many ants around this late in the fall, so we won't have to worry about—"

" _Sir?!_ " Codsworth's panicked voice shatters the quiet atmosphere like a baseball throw a window. _"Ma'am? You should come and see this!"_

River and Nate share a concerned look. The only thing Codsworth frets about is the state of the azaleas. If he's _scared_ … "Codsworth?" Nate calls. "What's wrong?"

River doesn't wait for Codsworth to answer. Before Nate even has the chance to finish his sentence, she's out the door and into the living room, where the Mister Handy floats in front of the TV. The news reporter's professionally objective tone is gone, replaced by a somber expression and a trembling voice. _"…followed by…"_ He clears his throat. _"Yes, followed by flashes, blinding flashes. Sounds of explosions. We're, uh, trying to get confirmation, but we seem to have lost contact with out affiliate stations…"_

"Whoa, whoa, what did he say?" Nate steps into the room, cradling Shaun in his arms. "Turn it up, turn it up."

 _Shit, shit, fuck, oh god, shit, fuck._ River's hands are shaking as she fiddles with the volume knob. _Please, oh god, no…_

The newscaster pauses, fear flashing across his face, before he continues. _"We do have… coming in… it's um, confirmed reports, I report, confirmed reports of nuclear detonations in New York and Pennsylvania… My god." Unable to go on, the newscaster cradles his head in his hands. "They were right…"_

It feels like all the air has rushed out of River's lungs and she as forgotten how to breathe. New York. That's close, that's too close, that is _too damn close_ to Massachusetts. "Nate," she chokes out. "Nate, oh my god."

The alarms start. There's shouting outside. "We have to go." Nate's voice is sharp, his blank expression a wall against the tide of horror that has washed over the house. He's in Soldier Mode, now, making his way to the door with no hesitation in his stride. "River, we have to get to the Vault, now. I've got Shaun, let's _go_."

 _It's too close._ River feels like her legs have turned to jelly as she stumbles after him. The pavement is cold against her bare feet, and the morning dewdrops still cling to the grass with all their might. _This isn't fair,_ she thinks. Why? Why would they do this, how could this happen? She takes some small comfort in the fact that Nate seems to have fallen back on his old training and that he knows what to do, because she has no fucking idea and she is _so scared._

The neighborhood is in a similar state of chaos. People are running through the streets, crying and shouting for family members to _hurry up, the Vault's this way._ Others remain on their lawns, too horrified to do anything but stand there and cling to their loved ones for support. Helicopters fly overhead, and soldiers are putting up barricades and guiding people through evacuation protocol. _"Residents of Sanctuary Hills!"_ one of them shouts over a megaphone. _"If you are registered, evacuated to Vault 111 immediately!"_

Over the din, she can hear Shaun crying again. "Shh," Nate says as they turn into the little woods that stretch out west of the neighborhood and over the bridge that leads across the stream. "Shhh, it's okay, daddy's got you…"

As they head up the steep incline, a massive, freshly painted billboard cheerfully advertising the Vaults comes into view. River can't figure out if the Vault-Boy smiling down at them is a symbol of comfort or not. The fence surrounding the Vault entrance is just up ahead; she can see the representative from earlier arguing with one of the guards. "This is absurd!" he shouts. "I _am_ Vault-Tec!"

"You're not on the list, you don't get in," the officer replies gruffly.

River's heart clenches in fear. There's a list? What will happen to everyone who isn't on it? One of her neighbors – Mrs. Hamilton, who always threw the biggest Easter potlucks – seems to hit the same realization. "Our house doesn't even have a basement!" she cries. "Where are we supposed to go?!"

 _Oh god. Oh god, oh god._

The Vault-Tec rep shakes his head. "I _am_ going in there!" he says, taking a step forward. "You can't stop me!"

Another guard, this one tall and menacing and wearing in that power armor stuff – brandishes the minigun in his hands, the loud whirring of the spinning barrels almost drowned out by the terrified screaming of the would-be refugees. The representative throws up his hands in surrender. "A-ah! Okay, oo-okay!" he stammers, turning tail and stumbling back down the hill.

The officer shakes his head. "If you're in the program, step forward!" he shouts. "Otherwise, return to your homes immediately!"

River steps forward, trying her best to look like her thoughts aren't a jumbled mixture of "oh god" and "what the fuck." _Keep it together. For Shaun's sake._ If nothing else, she needed to get her son where he would be safe. "We need to get in," she says, her voice shakes. "We're on the list, check under 'Samson!'"

The officer checks the clipboard in his hands, flipping the list until he finds what he is looking for. "Nathan, River Yu, and infant son?" he asks.

"Yes, that's us!"

"Okay," the officer says, stepping aside and allowing them to pass. River feels wave upon wave of guilt crash against her conscious as she feels the accusing gazes of her neighbors boring against her back as the continue upwards. She doesn't blame them for being angry; after all, safety is only an arm's reach away for her, and who knows what's going to happen to them?

Her thoughts must be written on her face, because suddenly Nate is by her side, lightly pressing his shoulder against hers in a gesture of comfort. "Hey," he says. "Hey. I'm here. We're both here. Everything's going to be just fine."

River knows that neither of them truly believes that, but she smiles gratefully up at him anyway.

They are ushered forward alongside the other few who were lucky enough to be let through the gates, reaching the top of the hill where a large, round platform awaits. In the middle of the platform is what appears to be a lift of some sort, shaped similarly to a cog and with the words VAULT-TEC embossed on it in white letters. "Step on the platform!" one of the officers instructs. "In the center!"

River does, grabbed onto Nate's shoulder and practically hauling him along with her. "We're here," she pants, more to herself than to anyone else. "We're here, we're safe, we're fine, you and Shaun are going to be okay, I love you both so much, we're going to be fine, I love you, I lo—"

When the world ends, it is all at once. The explosion, the bright flash of light that sets the sky ablaze like a sea of orange, the screams of the people around her, Nate's panicked shout of "Oh my god!" It's all so much, and River cannot do anything but stare at the mushroom cloud rising in the distance, and the tide of dust and debris headed their way. Beyond the haze of horror that clouds her every thought, she can faintly hear the officers shouting to _send it down, now,_ but she doesn't register it. When the lift begins to lower, sending them down into the earth, she doesn't register it. When Nate pulls her down into a kneeling position, murmuring comforting nothings to both her and a crying Shaun, and the rush of debris and wind and dust roars over their head, she doesn't register it.

The only thing she can register is, _so this is really it._

It takes a few minutes before River can think clearly again. The first thing she notices is Nate's warm, trembling hand on the back of her neck and his forehead pressed against hers. Underneath her, still cradled to Nate's chest, Shaun whimpers and coos up at her, dark eyes large as he takes in their new surroundings. "Oh god," she whispers.

"I know." There's a hollowness in Nate's gaze, and he's staring somewhere between the floor and the air. "I know, babe."

"Nate, _Codsworth…_ we didn't even get to say goodbye to Codsworth."

"I know. Don't think about it. It's best if we just… don't think about it." There's a flash of pain in Nate's eyes, and Rvier knows he's remembering things he'd rather not his time in the military, in Anchorage. How many explosions had he seen? How many times had he had to experience something similar to this? _Was_ there anything similar to this? Watching the place you called home collapse in on itself?

 _Not now._ River closes her eyes and leans against him, trying to offer him as much comfort as he was offering her. _Don't think about this now. We can fall apart together later, but right now we need to stay strong. For Shaun._

They stay that way for a few moments, taking in each other's presence as the world around them stabilizes itself. After what feels like too short a time, Nate nudges her. "Hey. We don't want to keep them waiting."

"Fuck 'em." She doesn't even know who "they" are, but fuck them anyway.

"Not in front of Shaun, sweetie."

"Sorry." River reluctantly gets to her feet and looks around, taking in her new home. Or, at least, the entrance to it; they are still in the lift, those around her huddling up against with other with various states of shell-shock reflected in their eyes. The first thing River makes note of is that it is very _gray;_ a cold gray, mind, with steely blues and unwelcoming greens tinting the steel walls that now surround them, but it is a gray nonetheless. Though, after seeing that much orange, that much fire and dirt and smoke, River will take a little gray. She can hear the sounds of machinery settling within the walls, a crushing hum of generators and pipes and cooling systems that sets her nerves on edge. It sounds like… it _feels_ like the entire earth is weighing down above them and will collapse upon them at any moment.

Ahead of the lift, standing next to a creaky-looking flight of stairs, is a brown-haired man with a mustache and yet another damned clipboard, accompanied by a Vault-Tec security officer clad in riot armor. Both of them are also dressed in some sort of form-fitting, blue-and-yellow jumpsuit. The security officer speaks first. "Everyone, please step off the elevator and proceed up the stairs in an orderly fashion!" he shouts.

"No need to worry, folks," adds the mustachioed man, whom River can only assume is the one in charge of the Vault. "We'll get everyone situated in your new home. Vault 111: a better future, underground!" Even now, with everyone driven into the Vault by the actual goddamn apocalypse, the words still sound like a sales pitch. _What's the point?_ River thinks bitterly. _We're already here, you don't need to sell us on the fine details._

To her left, Mr. Russell weakly pipes up. "So we just…?"

The officer nods. "Yes, up the stairs. Quickly, please."

They slowly make their way down, River hovering protectively in front of Nate and Shaun. The man who had until a few minutes ago been her next-door neighbor, Mr. Able, whispers to himself, "I can't believe it… if we had left just a minute later… we'd all be…"

"No, no!" The Overseer steps forward, hastily attempting to shoo away the cloud of despair that had settled over them all. "Don't get caught up thinking about all that. You're safe now."

 _Right. Fall apart later. Keep it together now._

Up the stairs and just ahead, past a Vault door so large and so heavy that nothing could possibly break through and what seems to be a set of scanning devices (x-ray scanners, perhaps), a woman with dark skin and closely cropped hair is handing out jumpsuits similar to the ones the staff are all wearing. "Here you go," she says, handing River a pair of jumpsuits. "There are changing rooms just over there for you and your husband."

"And these will fit?"

"Of course! Vault-Tec suits are designed to be practical, stylish, and comfortable! Nothing but the best for our residents!" the woman replies with a cheery smile. "Off you go, now. Once you're done changing, just follow the doctor. He'll show you where to do."

"Right." River ducks into one of the changing rooms, pulling the curtain shut behind her. Her knees feel like jelly, and she has to lean against the wall for support. Jesus, what the hell had just _happened?_ Everything around her has changed so much that she feels like she might get whiplash from the whole experience.

Is this really going to be her new home? Is this really where she'll have to raise her son?

She wonders who fired the first nuke. She wonders who started this whole damn war because she _needs_ someone to blame, she _needs_ someone to look at and say "you did this, you asshole."

 _Get. It. Together._ She repeats that to herself over and over again as she turns her attention to the jumpsuits in her arms. It's not difficult to tell which one is meant to be for her and which one is for Nate; she is much shorter than he is, the damned tall bastard. She wonders if Shaun will get a similar jumpsuit when he's older. She wonders if they'll be underground that long.

She gets into the jumpsuit. It's easy enough to put on, just step in and zip up, and the woman passing them out wasn't lying when she had said that it would be comfortable to wear. It certainly _fit_ well enough, molding to the muscles of her arms and back like a second skin. An insulated, bright blue second skin.

Grabbing the second jumpsuit, she steps out into the main room where her family is waiting for her. Nate shoots an appreciative gaze her way, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards wryly. "Wow," he says. "If that's what you're going to be dressed in all the time now, maybe this place won't be so bad."

It's his way of alleviating the tension, of trying to make things seem just a little bit brighter. And it works; River lets out a shaky laugh, swatting at his arm. "You hush now," she says. "You've still gotta get changed."

"Yeah. Right." He lets her take Shaun into her arms and takes the jumpsuit, vanishing behind the curtain. River leans against the wall, shivering slightly as the cold of the metal seeps in through her new attire. _Guess even Vault-Tec hasn't figured out how to make cold metal less… well, cold._ "Hey, buddy," she says to Shaun, who is sucking on his fingers while staring up at her. "This is gonna be out new home for a while, okay? D-don't worry, I'm sure you're gonna love it here. They've probably got a playroom for little kids, and since I think you're the only kid here, you'll have it all to yourself. Doesn't that sound like fun?" She bounces him lightly on her hip, and he gurgles in response. "Y-you'll be able to see Codsworth again soon, I promise."

She doesn't know if it's a lie or not. Did Codsworth make it? RobCo liked to boast how their robots could survive nuclear explosions, but that bomb had been so _close_. And even if he has survived, will they even make it out of the Vault to see him? What will he do, all alone up there with nothing but the rubble and the radiation to keep him company?

Luckily for her, Nate steps out of the changing room and distracts her from the pit that this train of thought is leading her towards. He hasn't been joking about the jumpsuits; the way the blue fabric fits on him is _very_ flattering, highlighting the wiry muscles of his arms and legs. "You look good," is all River can say.

"I hope so. This thing is pretty tight around the armpit." Nate swings his arms back and forth for emphasis. "So, shall we go find the good doctor and get checked up or whatever it is they need from us? I hope it doesn't involve needles."

"It's probably going to involve needles, Nate."

"Gaahhh. Let a man dream."

The doctor is waiting for them at the end of the hall, that now practically trademarked Vault-Tec smile plastered across his face. He's not wearing a jumpsuit like everyone else, instead dressed in the typical white-coat and tie ensemble that doctors usually wear. "You all dressed? Good, follow me." He leads them down the hall. "You're going to love it here. This is one of our most advanced facilities. Not that the others aren't great, mind you."

"How long do you think we'll be down here?" Nate asks. The million-dollar question.

The doctor waves away his concerns. "Oh, we'll be going over all that in orientation. There's just a few medical items we have to get through first." He stops in a room with strange pod-like devices lining the walls. "The decontamination chambers will purge any residual radiation you may have picked up from the... ah, well, the explosion... as well as any sort of communicable diseases you may be carrying. Just step in and it'll do the rest. Don't worry, it's perfectly safe for your child."

As if on cue, Shaun hiccups and begins crying. "Shhh, shh." River sways back and forth, rocking him gently in an attempt to calm him down. When he refuses to quiet after a few moments, she looks over at Nate. "Sweetie?"

"I got it. Hey, little man, Daddy's here." Nate takes Shaun into his arms. "See, now? Don't worry about the big scary Vault-Tec, man, he's just here to help us, okay?"

For the briefest of moments, River thinks she sees the doctor's smile falter. But it's only a second, so quick she's not sure she didn't just imagine it. "That's right," he says. "Now, please step into the decontamination pod."

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, River clambers into the nearest empty pod, with Nate entering the one across from her. As she turns herself around and gets herself settled into the hard leather seat, River exhales, and it's like everything she had been holding in since the bomb went off escapes from her lips, her shoulders slumping forward and her head falling back to hit the headrest. The door to the pod closes, and across the hall Nate waves at her from his pod, a goofy grin on his face.

She grins back. _Oh, Nate. What would I do without you?_ Comforted by the fact that her family is right there, she closes her eyes and waits for the decontamination pod work its magic.

* * *

 **Like my Elder Scrolls fic, each chapter will be ended with a few brief facts about some of the thought processes and details involved in the writing process. These are referred to as "Fun Facts From Mal." Since this is the first chapter, we're going to be keeping it simple.**

 **FFFM #1: The Nate in this fic is simply default whitebread Nate in terms of appearance. Given about how long he lasts, I couldn't get invested enough to give him a custom face. I was invested enough to give him an actual personality, though! It'll hurt more that way. :)**

 **FFFM #2: Yes, I know the female Sole Survivor is canonically a lawyer. But this isn't the canon female Sole Survivor. This is River, and River is a boxer. The lawyer backstory isn't really that relevant to the rest of the game anyways, so changing it doesn't really have an effect on the storyline or anything.**

 **FFFM #3: The way the Sole Survivor and their spouse just magically happen into their Vault Suits in public always struck me as a little odd and didn't really work well with the narrative, so I was nice and gave them a changing room. That's the nicest I'm going to be River for a while.**


	2. Out of the Frying Pan

**A/N: I got this one a lot faster than I thought I would. Neat.**

 **In response to** **scribblescribblescribble's comment on how last chatper was probably the nicest I will be, thaaaat's not too inaccurate, really. Hey, not my fault Bethesda gave me all this wonderfully tragic scenarios to work with.**

* * *

 **Chapter Two – Out of the Frying Pan**

* * *

 _"Resident secure. Occupant vitals: normal. Procedure complete in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1."_

Decontamination is a _cold_ process, River notes as her vision fogs over and her limbs go heavy under the icy chill that has filled the pod. _What are they trying to do, freeze the radiation out of me?_ Even _blinking_ is a difficult process; every muscle in her body feels like it is made of lead. Really, really cold lead.

But the feeling passes after a minute, and River slowly regains the feeling in her limbs. Drowsiness must be just one of the side effects of whatever it is they're doing to her. It's a small price to pay to ensure she doesn't accidentally irradiate everything, she supposes. Still, how must Shaun be handling it? They said it was safe, but…

The fog within the pod begins to dissipate with a hiss, and the robotic, feminine monotone pierces through her lazy consciousness. _"Manual override initiated. Cryogenic stasis suspended."_

…What? She has to have misheard that.

Her vision clears up, and she can see through the window of her pod door. It's a lot darker than it was before, and she can't see any of the doctors or the fellow refugees from before. Inside the other pod, she can see Nate, eyes closed like he fell asleep in the decontamination pod. _What the hell? What's going on, where is everyone?_

As if in answer to her silent question, a strange figure in some sort of white hazmat suit appears. River weakly bangs on the inside of her pod, her throat surprisingly dry as she shouts, "Hello? What's going on? Let me out of here!" It's hard to keep up the movement; every muscle in her body is still stiff from whatever the _fuck_ the pod's done to her.

The figure ignores her, instead pointing at Nate's pod. "This is the one. Here." A woman's voice, low and husky and slightly muffled by the mask of her suit. River's breath catches in her throat, and her heart begins to hammer against her chest as she realizes just how helpless she feels, trapped and ignored and confused and scared out of her wit's end. _Fuck, fuck, damn it, would someone just get me out of this damn thing already?!_ She needed space, she needed to breathe, she needed to get to Nate and Shaun and find someone from Vault-Tec to explain all this.

A second figure steps into view. This one is a man, with pale skin and a shave head and clad in some strange, weather-beaten leather ensemble with bits and pieces of what look the be scrap metal strapped to his arm like some sort of makeshift shoulder guard. "Open it," he orders. His voice is low, too, but harsher and drier. Like sandpaper against her eardrums.

The woman in the hazmat suit fiddles with the control panel right next to the pod for a moment, and the door to Nate's pod pops open. River freezes for a moment, horrified, but is hit with a wave of relief when she sees her husband stir and shiver and her son let out a confused cry. They were fine. The pod hadn't hurt them, they were fine and right there. But why were these strangers opening his pod alone? Or anyone else's, for that matter? She still didn't see anyone she recognized, not the Ables or the Whitfields or Mr. Russell or even the cold, plastic smiles of any Vault-Tec employees.

Nate seemed just as confused, looking around at his surroundings with bleary eyes. "Is it over?" he coughs. "Are we okay? Where's River?"

"Almost," the bald man says. "Everything's going to be all right." Nate still looks dazed, and he doesn't notice how the hazmat woman cautiously approaches and reaches out towards the still-crying Shaun. River's relief immediately flips right back over to horror with a side helping of pissed-off. _Don't you dare touch my baby._ She tries to lurch forward, to find some way to force open her pod, but she can barely move, beyond the shivers that routinely wrack her body even with the warm insulation of the jumpsuit. She's still so damn cold.

It's then that it hits her that Vault-Tec lied.

"Come here," the hazmat woman says, her voice gentle as she takes hold of Shaun. "Don't worry…"

Nate notices her and pulls away, drawing Shaun close to his chest. "It's all right, you don't have to do that. I've got him. We're cold, but we're fine. Seriously, though, what's going on." He peers across the hall. "River? You all right in there?"

River barely manages to nod.

"Great. Could either of you please let my wife out? Hey, hey, hey, I said I've got him!" The woman in the hazmat suit doesn't relinquish her grip on Shaun, still trying to tug him from Nate's arms.

 _Click._ "Let the boy go." The bald man pulls a gun from the holster at his thigh and points it at Nate, his voice growing dark. "I'm only going to tell you once."

No. No, no, _no no no no no!_ River finally manages to push herself forward, slamming herself against the door to her pod. It's all for naught but a bruised shoulder, though, as the chamber remains airtight. "Nate…" she gasps. "Nate…!"

Nate shakes his head firmly and tries to kick the hazmat woman away. "I'm not… giving you Shaun!" he shouts. "Let go of—"

 _BANG._

River's world ends a second time as she watches Nate slump backwards. " _No!_ " she shouts, pounding her fist against the window again and again, as if the glass will suddenly decide to give under the force of her weak punches. " _Nate!_ " This is a nightmare, the worst sort. It has to be, Nate can't be… he can't be… Her shouting turns to sobbing, and she slumps against the door, forehead pressed against the window. "Nate…"

It is her son's screaming cries that catch her attention again. She looks up with wide-eyed horror as the hazmat woman pulls Shaun away from the limp arms of Nate's… _oh god…_ and rocks him back and forth in an attempt to sooth him. _Shaun… no…_ She has to get out. She has to rescue her son, she has to figure out that the hell is happening and where everybody is and who these bastards are and how fast and how _painfully_ she can make them pay for what they've just done. She… she has to…

"Goddamn it." The man sounds contemptuous as he steps away from the now-closing pod, and that only makes River more furious because how _dare_ he shoot her husband without hesitation and then act like his hand was forced, like it was a secondary resort. He and the hazmat woman look over to something out of River's field of vision. "Get the kid out of here, and let's go." He steps forward towards River's pod, and for the first time she can see his face, the way his mouth is set into a hard, cold frown, the dark stubble across his chin and jaw, the ragged scar that has been torn across his left brow. She commits this face to memory, burns it into her mind along with every ounce of anger, of horror, of grief, of _hatred_ that she feels right at this very moment. "At least we still have a backup."

He and the hazmat woman walk out of view, taking Shaun with them and leaving River alone with nothing but the reality of the situation and the body of her husband in the pod ahead of her. After a few moments, the adrenaline kicks in, and she reaches up and begins pushing at the door. Maybe she can brute force it open, or find some sort of leverage…

" _Cryogenic sequence reinitialized."_ The soft voice of the computer is like a punch to the gut.

"Don't you dare," River growls through gritted teeth. "Don't you _fucking_ dare." The computer doesn't listen. Of course it doesn't; it's a series of processes and commands doing what it was told to do, and what it was told to do was re-freeze her. The pod begins to fog up again, and she struggles against the cold as her limbs grow heavier and heavier. Soon it becomes too much, and River once again feels helpless. She grows slack, her arms falling to her side and her head hitting the pod door as everything turns white and then…

And then it stops. All at once, the fog disappears and River finds herself breathing again. She coughs, weakly at first, and then louder as the dry, cold air itches at the inside of her lungs. The computer speaks again, this time with a faint echo that suggests that her pod is not the only place the voice is coming from. _"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All Vault residents must vacate immediately."_

 _Yes… yes!_ River lets out a humorless laugh. _Not putting me on ice, you murderous son of a bitch. I just need to get out of here._

The pod door promptly slides open, and without it to keep her propped up River finds herself tumbling forward. She lets out a strained _oomph_ as she hits the ground, finding quite painfully that it is just as cold outside the pod as it is inside. The floor is covered in a thin layer of ice, and around her she hears nothing but the _drip drip_ of leaking water and the dull, punctuated blaring of an alarm. "G-g-goddamn," she hisses as she gets to her feet and rights herself.

And comes face-to-face with Nate's pod. "No… no, no, Nate!" She tugs at the pod door. "Come on, open, damn you! There has to be some sort of way to get you open!" Her gaze falls to the control panel, and she remembers how the hazmat woman got the pod open. "All right. All right, I've got this, I've got this, oh, god, Nate, please be…" As she hastily searches for the button or switch or whatever that will open the hatch, her thoughts are bursting through her mind almost faster than she can think them. Maybe Nate is still alive. Maybe the bullet didn't kill him, maybe the bald man with the scar didn't hit anything vital, maybe there's a life support system keeping him alive, maybe she can find someone to help him, maybe, maybe, _maybe—_

"Maybe" does her nothing. She needs to _know._

She's not sure what she presses or pulls to get the pod open, but open it does. "Oh my god, Nate!" She practically flings herself towards the frozen, unmoving form of her husband. "Nate? Oh, _Nate…_ " With the pod door open, she can no longer ignore the dark red stains splattered across the inside, can no longer "maybe" her way into thinking that the bullet hole in Nate's head isn't there, can no longer hope for a heartbeat.

River lets out a choked cry, her knees buckling as she crumbles against the pod and Nate's… Nate's body. This isn't fair, she thinks as she sobs against his lap, her fingers curling against his knees to keep herself steady. _How can this be happening?_ Her entire life had been turned upside-down in the span of a few moments, but there had been a glimmer of hope because her family was here and they had each other to help them through this mess. Now she didn't even have that; the man she loved was dead, killed trying to protect their child, and Shaun…

 _Shaun!_ River's eyes fly open. Shaun was still alive. He was still out there somewhere, in the hands of someone who wasn't afraid to stoop to murder. She can't allow that. She pulls herself up, slipping a little against the icy floor, and forces herself to face Nate's body head-on. Her hand falls against his own, comes across a band of freezing metal, and she looks down to see his wedding ring, covered in a thin layer of frost. Carefully, she slides it off his finger and grips it tightly, and it's not the cold that makes her voice tremble when she speaks. "I'll find who did this," she promises, "and I'll get Shaun back." She'll make them pay for what they did.

But first, she has to find her way out of this damned death trap. Closing the pod – she can't give him the burial he deserves, so this is the best she can manage for now – and slipping the ring into one of the jumpsuit's pockets she stumbles her way down the hall, past the rows and rows of other pods, each with a face she recognized from the neighborhood. The Ables, the Callahans… all as still as the grave.

A grave. That's as good a word as any for this place. What was Vault-Tec up to, lying to them about their safety and then locking them in cryostasis? How long had they been like that? Weeks? _Months?_

And where even _was_ Vault-Tec, anyway?

She sees a terminal on the far end of the wall. _Maybe that'll have some information,_ she says, stumbling over to it. There's nothing that can help her, but there is a list of the pods and their occupants. Bitter curiosity gets the best of her, and River checks it.

 _Pod C2. Andrea Callahan. Occupant status: Deceased. Cause of Death: Asphyxiation due to life support failure._

A gardener by trade, Mrs. Callahan had always been a little judgmental, but she'd helped out when River and Nate had struggled to keep their flower bed alive before they'd gotten Codsworth.

 _Pod C4. Gregory Able. Occupant status: Deceased. Cause of Death: Asphyxiation due to life support failure._

 _Pod C5. Nancy Able. Occupant status: Deceased. Cause of Death: Asphyxiation due to life support failure._

The Ables had invited her and Nate over to dinner when they'd first moved into the neighborhood. Mr. Able had made amazing the most amazing pork roast, and River spent months trying to get his recipe.

 _Pod C6. Nathan Samson and Shaun Yu Samson (infant)._

River freezes, her breath coming out in a shaky whimper.

 _Occupant status: unknown. Pod door manual override engaged. Pod C7. River Yu Samson. Current status: unknown. Remote override engaged._

So that was it. Everyone she'd known from her old life, gone. River feels her legs growing weak under the stress of that knowledge, and promptly pushes herself away from the terminal. "No. Keep it together, River," she orders herself. "You can have you breakdown later, right now you need to get the hell out of here and catch up to the bastards who've taken your son." Once she starts talking, she can't stop, her stream of consciousness taking over as she heads down the hall. "Which of course raises the question of how I even get out of here and how they got out of here, if they even did, because there should be way too much radiation above ground for anyone to survive for a few minutes, I mean maybe I buy the one in the hazmat suit, but the scarred asshole? No, fuck that, he'd be dead of every cancer ever before you could say 'duck and cover.'" Swearing aloud the way she does make her think of Nate. _You'd make a sailor blush, sweetie,_ he'd always tease as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss against her cheek. _Not that that's a bad thing, but maybe tone it down in front of Shaun?_ She'd promised at the time, but now…

She sighs. There's no point in censoring herself now.

She turns down towards the hall she remembers walking down when they'd first arrived, only to find it sealed shut. _"Malfunction in emergency exit door override,"_ the computer intones over the intercom. _"Please contact your Vault-Tec maintenance representative for service."_

Figures. She tries prying it open anyway, just in case. No such luck. "God motherfucking _damn_ it, what's the point of muscles if I can't use them to move shit?!" she shouts, slamming her fist against the door. It's a decision she comes to regret immediately, as paint bursts across her knuckles. " _Shit_!" She pulls away, shaking out her hand and hissing in pain as she turns around to try and find a separate exit. Grief has taken a backseat to fear and anger and adrenaline. "And speaking of getting out, where the _hell_ did everyone go?"

There's a door to her right that slides open as she approaches, and she runs through it, gasping for breath against the dry, cold air as she practically leaps down a short set of stairs, around a corner, and past a window. It is there she stops when she sees something moving out of the corner of her eye and hears a faint chittering sound. She looks back through the window. Nothing; it's just some sort of storage area, with crates and boxes casting a sharp silhouette against the faint fog that has permeating the entire area. "Hello?" she calls out. "Is anyone there? Please, they took my son, I need help getting out of here!"

Nothing.

The hairs on the back of River's neck begin to stand on end, and she feels a cold shiver run down the length of her spine. "Okay, fine, great, we'll play it that way if that's how you want it." She continues down the hall. "There's no fucking way I'm the only one left, not with all those Vault-Tec people and their smiles and their lies and _oh Mrs. Samson please step into this totally-not-a-cryogenic-stasis-chamber, it'll take just but a moment._ Can't believe the government was funding this madness, what the everloving he _yeaaaaaugh!_ " She was cut off by something very big and very loud flying directly at her face. She barely manages to avoid it, falling backwards and landing very solidly on her backside. " _What-in-the-shit!_ " she shouts, scrabbling across the floor until she hits the wall, pinned between it and a table. The thing that attacked her follows, and she kicks it away, getting a fairly good look at it. It _looks_ like a cockroach, with the six legs and the antennae and the mandibles that click menacingly as it approaches again. The only difference is that it's easily as long as her arm. She knows roaches can get pretty big if left to their own devices, but two-feet-long big?

She doesn't have the time to try and figure out a reasonable explanation for this, however, because the roach is getting closer and she doesn't want it anywhere near her for reasons that should be _really fucking obvious_. She reaches up to the table and feels around for something, _anything_ that can help her fend the insect off. Her fingers brush up against something long and thing, and she pulls down a baton that looks like the standard-issue sort that security officers use. "You'll do," she declares, and swings it at the roach.

 _Crnch_. The blow hits its mark, crushing the thing's head and sending it skidding across the floor. River waits a few seconds to make sure that it's not going to get up and jump at her again before pulling herself up off the floor. She lingers over the roach for a second before giving it another solid _thwak_ because if inch-long cockroaches can survive nuclear fallout then two-feet-long ones can probably survive a security baton to the head and she does not want to take and chances. The baton is covered in a thick, yellow paste when she pulls it away, and between trying not to throw up and trying not to flip her shit River thinks that it's probably dead _now._ "Giant roaches," she wheezes. "Okay. Okay, I can deal with this. I'm a tough woman, I'm not afraid of a little bug." She pauses, giving the roach another look. "Though a big bug may be a different story." She decides that now is the best time to exit.

The rest of the vault is strangely quiet. Beyond having to beat down a few more roaches – seriously, what the _hell_ – there's no signs of life beyond her. She doesn't understand. Even if the rest of the people from the neighborhood had… well, the faculty should still be fine, right? She thinks of the man with the scar, of how easily he had pulled the trigger, and her stomach churns. She doesn't really want to think too much about that possibility.

Unfortunately, the first skeleton she runs across forces her to.

It's covered in scraps of tattered, familiar blue fabric, and appears far too old and dry and brittle to have been from when the two kidnappers came through. River takes a step back when she first sees his, hands flying to her mouth in horror. She didn't know that much about bones beyond how to avoid breaking them in the boxing ring, but she knows that these ones are way too old for her to have been in that pod for simply weeks, or even months. Her body locks up at the thought, at not knowing what happened here, at being so goddamned helpless that all she can do is beat away bugs with a glorified stick.

She _really_ wants to not be here.

Forcing her legs to move, one after the after, and pushes forward past the skeleton and the ones that follow it, through a dining hall and living quarters and a seemingly-endless series of hallways that seem to close in on her more and more the farther in she goes. The computer does not help, repeating the same warning about critical cryo failure over and over again in that monotonous tone. "Either I'm going to get out of here," River mutters, "or I'm going to end up going absolutely _fucking_ mad in the process!" She lashed out against the nearest wall, slamming her fist against the cold gray steel in a fit of desperate anger and a need to vent her frustration at _something_. Her knuckles ache in protest, but she doesn't care. She'll deal with it later. "Assuming I'm not already mad and this isn't some sort of delirious nightmare of mine. Oh, god, I wish it was just a nightmare." Everything just feels too real, with cold too biting and terror too gripping, for it to just be a dream.

It's when she reaches a large room with an equally large desk that she feels a little bit relaxed. This is the sort of place that someone in charge would work at. That terminal over there is the sort that someone in charge would use. And that skeleton there, in the coat that had once been white before the dust and the dirt and the stains of dark brownish-red that cannot be anything else but blood… that's the sort of coat someone in charge would wear.

She makes her way over to the terminal. It's unlocked, thank God; she's never been very good with breaking into computers. The lines of green text that scroll across the screen mark this of the terminal of an "Overseer," listing things like instructions, protocol, logs… she reads the instructions.

 _Vault 111 is designed to test the long-term effects of suspended animation on unaware human subjects… Long-term monitoring will be handled remotely… Under no circumstance is suspension to be disrupted… includes the administration of life-saving measures…_

"Holy shit," River whispers, eyes widening with every word. Vault-Tec had never intended to rescue them. They'd been guinea pigs from the moment that bomb dropped. She thinks of the representative who had shown up at her doorstep, and how desperate he'd been to get into the Vault, believing it was his only hope of survival. Her throat grows dry. Had even he been lied to?

She checks the logs, and her heart sinks with every passing date. October, December, March, April… there's no doubt now that they've been in here for much longer than a few months. The logs detail how the staff waited for an all-clear order that never came, and the mutiny that resulted as supplies grew thin and tension ran high between the Overseer and the rest of the staff. _Even your own people were expendable in the name of your damn tests, huh, Vault-Tec?_

But there has to be _something_ left above ground, some place for the kidnappers to have come from and some place for them to return to. And there has to be a way up there. River notices the last line of text in the main screen: _[Open Evacuation Tunnel]_. It's like all the air in her lungs comes out at once, taking the fear with it. "Evacuation tunnel" sounds a fuck of a lot like "a way out of this damned hellhole," and she'll take it. River activates the evacuation tunnel and pushes away from the terminal as the door ahead of her opens. She spots a pistol on the desk beside her, a small 10mm with a set of appropriate ammo next to it. She grabs them on a whim, remembering the gun the man had; beyond a few courses on defensive pistol use with Nate, she is beyond inexperienced with guns, but she doesn't want the only thing she brings with her back to the surface to be a gore-splattered baton and Nate's wedding ring. Not when she has no idea who or what waits above ground.

The evacuation tunnel is just as cold and filled with just as many roaches as the rest of the Vault, but it is brighter and cleaner and has a distinct lack of dead bodies that makes River feel slightly better about the situation she's in. Soon, she's back at a familiar place: the entrance. The biggest difference, however, is that now the same massive, impenetrable door from before is sealed shut, and it hasn't stopped being any less impenetrable in the time she's been frozen. "Nothing's ever easy, is it," River mutters. "Assholes couldn't even leave the door open on their way out, no, they had to make extra special sure that River couldn't come running after them as soon as possible. Maybe they just know what I'm going to do to them when I catch up with them. They'd better be fucking scared."

She reaches the control panel and tries the timeless method of "press random buttons until something happens" but everything she does results in the computer shouting error noises at her. The only button she doesn't press is the only button she _can't_ press because it is sealed behind a glass casing. "Oh, for the love of…" she grumbles as she reads the words surrounding some sort of terminal plug-thing... a port, that's the name for it. "What the hell is a Pip-Boy? And where am I supposed to find one of those?"

She takes a step backwards to give herself room for throwing her arms up in frustration… and promptly accidentally kicks something smallish on the ground. She looks down to see another skeleton on the ground, its hand lying a few feet away with some sort of device loosely wrapped around its wrist. "Okay," she says. "I'm going to hope-slash-assume that's a Pip-Boy. That's incredibly convenient, all things considered." She bents down to pick it up, delicately sliding it off the skeletal hand while trying not to think about the fact that she is genuinely actually robbing a dead body. "This must be one of those portable computer systems that everyone was talking about but never happened. If they were being developed for Vault-Tec, I can see why. Gotta keep those technological monopolies going, you know how it is." She doesn't hesitate to slam it on her own arm, buckling it tightly to her wrist and switching it on.

Immediately a strange, numbing sensation travels up her arm, like she's received an electric shot, and strings of green text scrolls down the screen too fast for her to read. Then it loads up, depicting a cheerful Vault-Boy walking in place, alongside some basic vitals. There are some other tabs, too, she notes as she runs a careful gaze across the top. A map, a data log, a built-in _radio_ , even… "I'll have to play with you later," River mutters. "First, I need to get the hell out of here. Now, where's the thing I plug into the panel… a-hah!" She finds the cord easily, and wastes no time in plugging it into the panel and, when the glass panel pops open, slamming her fist against the button furiously. "Come on, come on…"

There's a hiss of hydraulics that sounds better than all the music in the world. _"Vault door cycling sequence initiated. Please stand back."_

She's so close. She's almost out of this deathtrap. She's so close she can _taste_ it. "Come on, come on, come on…!"

When the door is pulled open and that first beam of blindingly beautiful light shines through, it is as if she is staring through the gates of heaven itself. Even when it turns out to just be an overhead light, still functioning after who knows how long, she doesn't care, because the elevator is right there and it will take her up to the surface and she will be _free_ and she will find Shaun. She vaults herself over the surface and rolls underneath the elevator gate that is rising far too slowly for her liking.

As she reaches to elevator, River looks up at the closed hatch, at one last barrier between her and the outside world. The remnants of rationale still lingering of the back of her mind remind her that a nuclear bomb was dropped not too far away not too long ago, and that radiation doesn't just disappear. Her response to these thoughts is to slip her hand into her pocket it and wrap her fingers around Nate's ring. A little nuclear fallout isn't going to stop her from saving her son. Not if she has anything to say about it.

The elevator rises. The hatch above opens. The computer speaks to her for what she hopes will be the very last time. _"Enjoy your return to the surface. And thank you for choosing Vault-Tec."_

* * *

The world above is distinctly less destroyed than she'd expected it to be. The sky is blue again, a far cry from the sickening orange it had turned when she'd first descended into Vault 111. The grass and the brush is dry and brown, but it still remains, growing against all odds. And, well… she doesn't _feel_ like she's about to be turned into a hulking, tumor-ridden mutant by the ambient radiation, like the routinely-broadcasted Vault-Tec PSAs said would happen. (Of course, Vault-Tec has firmly established themselves to be a bunch of fucking _liars_ by now, so who even knows anymore.)

But the bomb's touch can still be seen. The wire fence around the lift is warped and torn and twisted, the trees are little more than twisted trunks devoid of any life, and there isn't a person to be seen for miles. What can be seen is Sanctuary Hills. Or, rather, what remains of it; even from up here she can see that very few homes remain standing from the blast, and those that do are in a sorry state of disrepair.

But it is home, and home calls to her. She runs down the hill and over the stream, taking care as she crosses the now-rotting bridge, and knocks over a fence post as she makes a beeline for the neighborhood she'd once lived it. It is so… empty now. The brilliant orange of the autumn leaves is gone, and most of the houses have had their paint burned away from the force of the blast, leaving to whole place devoid of the color it once had. The neighborhood cars parked on the street are strewn about on the street, more rust than actual vehicle at this point. Worst of all is the silence. The air that had once been filled with the gleeful shouts of playing children and radios left on too loud is now filled with nothing but the sound of her own short, panicked gasps of breath and carefree British humming.

Wait.

What?

River whirls around, eyes wide. Off in the distance, three houses down, she sees a familiar house with peeling paint that had once been before the radiation got to it, weathered and beaten down but still standing. And outside that house, clipping away at a dead azalea bush, is a very familiar Mister Handy. River's eyes sting with tears. "Codsworth," she whispers. _"Codsworth!"_

The Handy freezes, his trimmer hovering a few inches over a half-broken stem. His three ocular orbs pivot about on their stalks, rotating to focus on her. "As I live and breathe…" Codsworth says incredulously. "Miss River?!"

It's him. It's really, really him. The whole world's gone to Hell in a handbasket, but he's still here, he's _still_ alive. For the first time since the bomb dropped, she feels genuinely, unshakably _relieved_. "Codsworth!" she shouts, running down the street at full sprint and practically barreling into him in her desperate joy. Hugging a Mister Handy is an awkward process – they're all orb and limb and the occasional nuclear jet – but it's worth it because now that she's holding him like this she knows that he's real, that he's not a cruel figment of her mind.

"It's…" Codsworth sounds choked up, like he'd cry if he had tear ducts. "It's really you!"

"Oh, Codsworth," River mumbles against his chassis. "I was so worried, when the bomb dropped, I… I didn't even say goodbye, oh, god, I thought you were dead, I…"

Codsworth harrumphed. "It'll take more than a little heavy radiation to stop me, ma'am! There are a few dents and dings, and I think one of my limbs needs oiling, but I'm still as ready to serve as ever!" He pulls out of her grasp a little. His chassis does look a little worse for wear; the chrome finish is gone and there are a few more uncomfortable-looking spots of rust. "Oh dear, you are in a state, aren't you?" It's then that River realizes what a mess she must look like, with tearstained cheeks and red eyes and her bun half undone. Codsworth continues, still as chipper as if the world hasn't just ended. "Wouldn't want Master Nathan to see you like that, would we? Erm…" He looks around. "Where _is_ sir, by the way?"

"He… oh god." The tears come flowing freely again, pouring down her face as River struggles to find the words, struggles to block out the sound of the gunshot still ringing in her ears. "Oh god, Codsworth, they… they _killed_ him. They killed him and they… they…"

"Ma'am!" Codsworth exclaims, aghast. "These things you're saying, these terrible things… oh, you must be disoriented after everything that's happened. I believe you're in need of a good distraction, help clear your mind a bit and calm this dire mood. It's been ages since we've had a proper family activity. Checkers, perhaps. Or charades! Oh, Shaun does so love charades. Erm, is the lad with you or with the sir…?"

He's not _getting_ it. River wishes she could be that optimistic about everything right now. "He's… they took him. They took my _baby_ , Codsworth. I need to find him, I need to save him…"

Codsworth turns his gaze on her with scrutiny, humming in concern. "It's worse than I thought," he declares. "You're suffering from hunger-induced paranoia. Not eating properly for two hundred years will do that, I'm afraid!"

"Damn it Codsworth, listen to me, these people, they _killed_ Nate and they _took_ Shaun and they—" What Codsworth is saying hits her all at once and it's like a punch to the throat. "W-wait. D-did you say… two _hundred_ years?"

"A bit over two hundred and ten, actually. Well, give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some minor dings to the old chronometer. That means you're, erm, two centuries late for dinner, ha ha!"

To River, it feels like she has missed breakfast.

To River, it feels like she went into the Vault only a couple of hours ago.

To River, it has been no time at all.

She slumps to the ground, breath shallow against her lips as she struggles not to fall to pieces right then and there. But no amount of repeating "keep it together" to herself will help this time, and all she can do is utter a strangled, "holy _shit_ " and breaks down sobbing.

No one was left. Beyond Codsworth, there was no way anyone she knew from her old life could have survived this long, even if they did survive the initial bombings. Her family, Nate's family, Nate's friends from the military, her friends from the boxing gym, the weird old man who ran the speakeasy in Concord… no one. And with everyone in the Vault dead, with Nate… _gone_ , and Shaun who knows where... _I really am the only one left, aren't I?_

"Erm… ma'am?" Codsworth says, a little hesitantly. "Perhaps I can whip you up a snack? You must be famished."

River stares up at him through teary eyes, incredulous at just how casually he's taking all this. Codsworth's friendly and helpful, yes, but he's not _completely fucking oblivious._ "What's going on with you?" she asks. "You're acting really strangely."

"I… I…" Codsworth doesn't respond for a long time, and River fears that he won't. Then he, too, breaks down. "Oh, ma'am," he blubbers, "it's been just horrible! Two centuries with no one to _talk to_ , no one to _serve_. I spent the first ten years trying to keep the floors waved, but nothing gets out nuclear fallout from vinyl wood. Nothing! And don't get me started about the futility of dusting a collapsed house. And the _car!_ The _car!_ How do you polish _rust?!_ I… The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought you and your family were… were… _dead_."

River takes a glance at the car underneath the awning to see that "rust" is a good name for what it has overall become. "Oh, Codsworth, I'm so sorry. I wish you had come with us, but they wouldn't have…" She doesn't suppose it would have made much of a difference, thought; it's not like Vault-Tec would have put a Handy in cryogenic stasis. Hell, being out here was probably the safest thing for him. If he'd gone with her or Shaun might have gotten caught in the mutiny or destroyed by the bald man or any number of other horrible fates. "I'm just so glad you're okay."

"Me, too, ma'am." A pause, and then Codsworth's gripping hand comes into view, holding a small, slightly weatherworn holotape. "I did find this, when I was trying to fix your bed." His voice is still shaking, but not as much. "I believe that Master Nathan was going to give it to you as a surprise. But then, well… everything happened."

River stares at it. A holotape from Nate? She takes it, holding it delicately as though it might break. (And given how long it's apparently been, it just might; she has no idea how long these things last.) "Do you know what's on it?"

"Hm. I believe it's a private message for you. My etiquette protocols would not permit me to play it for myself. Any standard holotape reading device should be able to play it back. Oh, like that portable computer on your arm. That should work brilliantly."

A message from Nate. This may be the only way she'll ever hear his voice again. That quiet, gentle voice, always sounding like he's got something funny on his mind. That same voice that he first whispered "I love you" with against the edge of her jaw in the back street behind the gym that one night. "Thank you, Codsworth," she says. "You… you have no idea how much it means for me to have this. Thank you."

"Of course, ma'am." Codsworth lifts himself up a little. "Now. Enough feeling sorry for myself. Shall we search the neighborhood together? Master Nathan and young Shaun may turn up yet."

He still doesn't get it. River can't bring herself to repeat those dreaded words, so she just gets to her feet, nods, and quietly says, "Okay."

The trip through the neighborhood is a sobering one, just her and a blissfully unaware Codsworth going down the cul-de-sac, searching through whatever houses still remain standing for a husband that will never appear and an infant whisked away to god knows where by god knows who. There are more giant insects out here, but instead of the giant roaches she know has to worry about monstrous flies, twisted by the radiation and grown to be as long as big as a car tire. To his credit, Codsworth handles himself much better than River, who is currently employing the combat technique of "screaming and swinging the baton around in terror." The way he shoots them down so precisely with his cutting laser makes her realize that she had probably been dealing with these things for the past two centuries or so.

Though it does not favors to River's already shaky self-confidence to know that her British robot housekeeper is more equipped to handle a post-nuclear world than she is, even with her years of boxing experience. (You can't box a _fly_ , not even a giant one.)

Sooner or later, though, the have to face the facts. "Ma'am..." Codsworth says, in the middle of the Hamiltons' ruined living room. "Sir and young Shaun aren't here either... They're really gone, aren't they?"

River takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Nate is... he's gone, sweetie. But Shaun... Codsworth, listen to me. Shaun is still alive. He's out there somewhere, and I damn well intend to find him."

Codsworth floats in quiet contemplation for a moment. "What about Concord, sir?" he suggests. "Plenty of people there. And last I checked, they only pummeled me with sticks a few times before I had to run back home."

"There are still people alive in Concord?" River asks, more hopeful than she has any right to be.

"Yes," Codsworth answers, "although they're a bit rough. You remember the way, don't you? Just across the southern footbridge out of he neighborhood, and then past the Red Rocket Station?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I remember. Thanks, Codsworth. I'll go check it out."

"Very good, ma'am! I shall remain here and secure the home-front!" Codsworth bobs affirmatively and makes his way back to their house. If she can call it that anymore.

River takes a deep breath and steps back out into the cul-de-sac, casting a last glance around her home. She can still place where everything once was where that toppled street lamp used to be, who that car belonged to. _Two hundred years_. If she weren't staring at the evidence with her own two eyes she would barely believe it. _What would Nate think about this whole thing?_ She genuinely didn't know what her husband would have thought, because she barely knows what _she_ thinks of it all.

Well. Several hours ago, she'd been a content ex-boxer and housewife, with a husband and a family and a home, the threat of total war lingering overhead but never fully realized. Now, she was a living relic, a recently-widowed woman out of time with nothing but a security baton and a small 10mm to fend off whatever waits for her out there. But for her son, she'd fight off every giant radiation horror in the world.

 _Don't worry, Shaun,_ she thinks as she sets off for Concord. _I'll find you._

* * *

 **A/N: I refuse to accept the fact that I live in a world where I cannot hug Codsworth.**

 **Oooh, more Fun Facts!**

 **FFFM #4: Not really relevant to this individual chapter, but the cover for this fanfiction is actually a crop from a WIP digital painting I'm working on. (You can see my artwork at .com.) That's why it looks a little unfinished. I'll update it once I finish the painting itself.**

 **FFFM #5: The neighbors in Fallout 4 don't have first names, but I decided to give them some anyway. Helps flesh out the Pre-War world a little more. There wasn't any real weight behind the specific names I chose, I just picked what I thought would sound good next to their surnames.**


	3. The Fire

**A/N: Ha hahhh, see what I did there with the chapter titles?**

 **A very merry thank you to those reviewing and adding this fic to their faves and alerts! Feel free to leave more, and don't be afraid to tell me what you specifically liked and didn't like about it! Feedback is important!**

* * *

 **Chapter Three – The Fire**

* * *

The Red Rocket filling stations had been a staple of life on the East Coast for as long as River can remember, and the truck stop just outside Sanctuary Hills is no different. Nuclear wear and tear aside, the station is very similar to how River remembers it, from the garage and its various tools and workbenches lining the walls, to the coolant pumps underneath the overpass, and even the little radio resting on the counter inside, battered but still recognizable.

What is new, however, is the German Shepherd that comes bounding over as soon as River approaches.

"Uh… hey, buddy," River says, a little dumbfounded. "You look… remarkably un-monstrous. You friendly? Are we friends?" The last thing she wants right now is to be forced to learn basic post-nuclear first aid on the fly because she pissed off a strange dog and it took a bite out of her leg.

Thankfully for her, the dog doesn't seem to be interested in attacking, instead sniffing curiously at her shins before letting out a happy bark and bounding in circles around her. River lets out a sigh of relief. "Okay! Friends! That's good. Good… boy? Good boy." She kneels down and reaches her hand out to the dog, who doesn't hesitate in leaning his forehead into her touch. His fur is remarkably thick and dense, she notes as she runs her fingers through the wiry and dark hairs at the ruff of his neck, and he certainly seems well fed; she can't feel a single rib underneath his skin. This can't be some wild stray, not as friendly and as well-kept as he is. "What are you doing all the way out here, huh? Is your owner inside?" She peers inside the filling station, but there's no sign of anyone around. "Where's your family, boy?"

The dog lets out a whimper and runs around behind her, nudging at her ankles before trotting off in the direction of the road. As he passes the filling station, he looks behind him and barks at her, as if saying, _"Well, what are you waiting for?"_

"You… want me to follow you?"

" _Rrrruff!_ "

"I…" German Shepherds are smart dogs, and trustworthy to boot. If this one's clever enough to want her to be in a specific place for a specific reason, she's not going to argue. Besides, maybe he's looking for help. Maybe _his_ family's in danger, too. "Okay, then. I guess I'm following a dog. Makes sense, I suppose, the dog probably has a better grasp of whatever danger is hanging around this place than I do, all things considered. All right, boy, lead the way."

The dog wags its tail in affirmation and sets off down the road at a reasonable pace, routinely pausing and checking to make sure River is keeping up. She is; while she is hardly in a state where she can run a marathon or bench press half a boxing gym, she is far steadier on her feet than she was when she first tumbled out of that damned pod, and she'll be damned if, after two hundred years, she leaves this world because she trips over her own two feet and bashes her head open on the crumbling concrete.

Be it through luck or design, the place the dog leads her is the exact same place that she was headed anyway: Concord. Or, at least, what remains of it. The historic city had always had that deliberately rustic, "look how old we are see this building was around since the eighteenth century" feeling to it, but now looked like it had been through a dozen ringers and then half a dozen more for good measure, with the old strings of decorative, patriotic pennants strewn about on the road and half the house missing either a wall or a roof or both. The old grocery store's door has gone missing, and when River peeks in she can see that the shelves have been scattered and smashed against each other. A ways ahead, she can see a crashed helicopter of some sort perched precariously on top of the Museum of Freedom.

It's almost as desolate as Sanctuary Hills, the only difference being the _fucking gunfire_ not too far ahead. River remembers what Codsworth said about the current residents being "rough" and grips the 10mm tightly. _He always did have a habit of understating the disastrous._ Her steps grow shorter and slower as she draws near the corner of the street. The gunfire's coming from around this corner, and now that she actually has to face it, her resolve wavers. Killing bugs was easy. Killing _people_ , even in self-defense, wasn't quite so. Would she be able to pull the trigger if she needed to? Would she even know who to shoot at?

 _Maybe one of the people shooting is the bastard who shot Nate,_ she thinks. Her nerves turn to steel at the thought. _I could shoot him, easily._

She looks over at the dog, who is staring at her as if waiting for her to make a move. "Okay, boy," she whispers, "You've led me this far, so I'm going to trust you to lead me a little bit farther. Do you know who the bad guys are?"

The dog huffs.

"I'll take that as a yes. All right, then." Perhaps trusting a dog to tell the difference between friend and foe in a gunfight wasn't the smartest idea, but he's come across as a very intelligent pooch so far, and he wanted her to follow him to Concord for a reason. Now it was just a matter of figuring out what. She jerks her head in the direction of the firefight. "Go get 'em, boy."

The dog lets out and affirmative howl and charges out of view. River hesitates for a final second before following suit, turning the corner and raising her gun as she takes in the scene in front of her as best she can. The battle seems to be more of a _siege_ , with a group of people dressed in leather and scrap metal shoot upwards at a lone gunman on the balcony of the museum, a man dressed in a long coat and… is that a _pre-Revolutionary hat?_ And is that rifle he's holding shooting _lasers?!_ _Remember when things used to make sense?_

Looking ahead, she sees that the dog is charging towards one of the leather-clad people in the street with a fearsome snarl, barreling into them and lunging towards their throat with snapping jaws. One of the other people in leather, also clad in some sort of gas mask, shouts, "Fuck, the damn dog's back!" He swings the gun in his hands – some sort of pistol that looks like it was cobbled together out of piping – around to take aim at the distracted dog. River's hesitation is overridden by adrenaline, and she aims her own pistol and fires. It's a poor shot, the bullet only grazing his side, but it's enough to draw his attention… and his gunfire. River only barely has time to duck back around behind the corner store before he opens fire.

"Rookie," shouts a voice, female with a faint twang to it, "the _fuck_ are you doing?"

"There's someone behind us, some asshole in a blue jumpsuit or something!"

"Bullshit!"

"I'm serious!"

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck._ River glances over at the shattered window leading into the corner store just to her right. _Good enough place to hide as fuckin' any, I guess._ She clambers inside, wincing as the shards of glass dig into her hands and bite at her shins. She hits the floor and immediately ducks down so that she can't be seen. She needs to get closer, needs to close the distance, because she's got shit aim and a mean right hook and, through some bizarre twist of logic, she'll stand a better chance if she runs _towards_ the assholes with the guns. Luckily these are the sort of stores that are all squeezed together fire-hazard-style, and as long as she keeps her head below window level she can crawl from one end of the block to another while only having to pass through a narrow alleyway. So that's what she does.

Outside, the people with the leather and the guns are still arguing amidst the gunfire. "I swear, Tess, I saw a woman in a blue jumpsuit! She shot at me, look!"

"There's no way, Rookie! The only people who wear blue jumpsuits are vaulties, and there's no fucking way that a _vaultie_ has the guts to go jumping into _this_ fucking mess! Even they're not that stupid!" River can't tell if she should be flattered or insulted. "Just focus on what's in front of us!"

"Fine, but if you get your head blown off, don't come crying to me!" There's a growl and a shout of pain, followed by a "Get off me, you stupid mutt!" a thump, and a pained yelp. River fights against her urge to pop her head back up and take another shot on sole "don't kick dogs you fuckhead" principle.

Turns out, she doesn't need to. There's a noise that sounds like it came straight out of one of a sci-fi B-movie followed quickly by a scream cut off far too early, the smell of burnt air, and the woman's incensed voice, shouting, " _Rookie!_ I'll get you for that, you Minuteman bastard!"

 _Minuteman?_ River wonders. _Is that the man on the balcony?_ She'll figure it out later. She's at the last store right now, the gunfire directly to her left. Finger hovering directly over the trigger, she peers over the windowsill at the view outside. There are three of them that she can see, not counting the gunman on the balcony who she _really_ hopes is the good guy here. The dog is fine, worrying at the leg of the nearest enemy. It's a clear shot, she just has to point and…

Point and…

 _You're no good to Shaun if you're dead._

It's that thought that motivates her, that pushes her up and urges her to aim the gun, line the sights up, and pull the trigger. It's not as clean or as dramatic as it is in the movies; blood and bits of gray and white splatter against the sun-bleached road, and her target drops unceremoniously to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Stomach churning with revulsion and horror, River stumbles backwards, almost dropping the pistol in her shock. Oh god, she just killed someone. She actually, legitimately _killed_ a person, and not in a pleasant manner. And no one else in the street seems to hesitate. Is this the world she lives in, now?

 _Keep it together,_ she manages to tell herself through the haze of nausea that threatens to overwhelm her senses. (She is very glad she did not take Codsworth up on his offer of a snack.) _You're not out of the woods just yet._ Indeed, the other two shooters in leather had noticed what she'd done and were now shouting and pointing their guns in her direction. She reacts on instinct, shooting right back at them. It takes a few tries; her aim is off the first time and the bullet strikes a street lamp instead, and _oh god_ the last of them doesn't die on the first shot. But she survives, and the dog survives, and the gunman on the balcony survives, and she very much hopes these are all good things.

She expects silence, but she is greeted by more gunfire from inside the museum, as well as a baritone voice shouting out to her. "Hey! Are you all right in there?"

River nods at first before realizing that he can't see her, so she follows it up by slowly walking out of the store with her hands half-raised and shaking. She can see the man more clearly now, dark-skinned and with an oval face partially obscured by the shadow of his hat. "I'm fine," she manages to say, but it's barely more than a whisper. "I'm fine, I'm fine."

But her meaning is received anyways. "Great!" the man shouts. "Listen, I've got a group of settlers inside, and the raiders are almost through the door! Grab that laser musket down there and help us! Please!" Something from inside catches his attention, and he looks over his shoulder before turning around and running back into the museum.

Help. They need help. She needs help, too. Maybe they can help each other. River nods to no one in particular and looks around, trying to look for whatever it is she's supposed to find and ignore the bodies strewn about simultaneously. She sees what looks like it _could_ be a gun, if a weirdly-shaped one, next to the body of a man dressed in similar pre-Revolutionary gear to the man upstairs. "That looks… laser musket-y, maybe?" she murmurs, staggering forward and picking it up. "I mean, I don't know how it works or what I do with it, but the man in the costume told me to do the thing, so I guess I'm doing the thing." The dog happily trots alongside her, snout as she moves towards the front door to the museum. "Because that's just what you do when the world ends, I guess."

* * *

There's blood all over her jumpsuit, and only some of it is hers.

The laser musket had been difficult for her to figure out at first, but eventually she got ahold of the crank mechanism and fired the gun all of once because the first time she had fired it she had _vaporized_ a man and the way his screams abruptly turned to silence still echoes in her ears. Luckily… for a certain definition of "luck"… she found a set of brass knuckles on the bodies of one of the raiders, as the man in the hat had called them, which had made things both easier and more difficult. Easier because she _knew_ how to fight in close quarters, how to through a punch in just the right way to knock out or... well, kill a man in seconds, and she had the muscle to back each strike. More difficult because that meant she had to get even _closer_ to the people with the guns and the knives and the pipe wrenches with makeshift blades attached to them to turn them into some twisted facsimile of a meat cleaver. That last one had given her some difficulty, and she had the shallow gash on her side to prove it.

But there was still one raider left, one slimy-voiced fucker pacing the hallway right outside of her hiding place. "Come on out, _girlie_ ," he sneers. "Don't be scared, I just want to repay you for killing all of my friends." _Creeeaaaak_. He passes by the display case she's shimmied behind, his boots ever so slowly pressing down on the age-weakened floorboards. "As painfully as possible, of course. Tell me, girlie, which one of your fingers are you _least_ attached to? I'll do you a favor and cut that one off first."

River has a finger or two that she'd like to show him if he keeps calling her "girlie" like that. Beside her, the dog lets out a huff of breath and presses his nose against her cheek inquisitively, as if asking why they haven't gone full Grognak on the damned raider already. Still, despite her growing frustration and the ebbing pain in her side, she stays put, her heart pounding louder and louder against her chest with every step the raider takes. She hopes that he will soon assume that she'd managed to give him the slip and go off in search of her, giving her an open shot at reaching the door at the far end of the hall.

The door that is slowly, noiselessly swinging open. She can see the gunman from before peer through, the corners of his lips tugged down in a concerned frown. His gaze falls upon her, and then on the raider who, mercifully, has his back currently turned _away_ from them. After a couple moments of analyzing the situation, the man beckons for River to move forward. She shoots him an incredulous look in response. He gives her a reassuring nod and gestures to the rifle in his hands, as if to say, _don't worry, I've got you covered_

Well, no reward without risk.

Taking a deep breath, River pulls herself out of her hiding place and bolts towards the door. Behind her, she hears the raider shout indignantly, and she tosses herself to the ground just as the bullets fly over her head and imbed themselves into the wall just beyond. She scrambles towards the door, an angry dog standing protectively over her as she crosses the hall. As soon as her fingers clasp around the doorframe, the Revolutionary gunman opens fire, needing only a single laser to turn the raider into a pile of ash. He pulls her inside the room, the dog following suit just as the gunman slams the door closed. "Man," he pants, "I don't know who you are, but your timing's _impeccable_.

River can only gape at him. "Uh." She was two hundred years in the future being talked to by someone dressed up like he came from two hundred years in the past.

It's been a weird day.

Now that she's face-to-face with him, she can get a better look at the man's face, of the roundness of his jaw and the thin scar cutting a path down his left cheek, of the closely cropped black hair barely visible under that hat that is pinned up on one side, of the unmitigated relief in his dark brown eyes as he regards her. Relief directed towards her. For killing some people? For... saving him? Her gaze sweeps across the room where four other people with dirt smudged across their faces and wariness in their eyes stare expectantly at him. Saving _them?_ From who?

It's then she realizes that the man in the hat is expecting her to say something. Unfortunately, her brain is still a bit fried from trying to process all this, and all she can manage is a "Hello...?"

The man glances down at her jumpsuit and shoots her a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, this must all be pretty new to you, huh? Being a Vault Dweller and all, I mean." Her gestures to himself. "Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen."

Commonwealth? Minutemen? Had she traveled forwards or _backwards_ in time? Still, she replies. "That was the, uh, the colonial militia, right?" It was something to think about that wasn't the blood staining her hands.

Preston Garvey nods. "'Protect the people at a minute's notice,'" he recites. "That was the idea. I joined up wanting to make a difference, and I did, but... things fell apart. Now it looks like I'm the last Minuteman left standing."

River has no idea what any of this "Minuteman" stuff means in the context of the apocalypse. Her brain has completely left the building. But she understands loss, and what she sees in Preston's eyes rings familiar. "I-I'm so sorry, that's... that's terrible. Was it the ones... outside?"

"Not entirely," Preston says with a shake of his head. "It started back in Quincy around a month ago, with the Gunners. But it's been one disaster after another since." He gestures to the people around them. "A month ago, there were twenty of us. Yesterday, there were eight. Now we're _five._ First the ghouls in Lexington, and now this mess…"

Jesus Christ. River leans against the wall for support as her legs threaten to give way underneath the weight of everything around her, ignoring the sharp ache in her side as she does. When the hell did "killing people" and "survival" become synonymous? "The world's changed so much…" she whispers, hanging her head in resignation. "I don't even know what to make of any of this." For what she doubts will be the last time, she wishes that she was frozen in the pod again, blanketed in frost and ignorance of what the world has become during her nap in the ice box. She shoves those thoughts out of her mind. If she were still in the pod, she wouldn't be able to go rescue Shaun.

She can hear the creaking of leather boots against centuries-old floors as Preston takes a couple wary steps towards her. "You all right?"

"Yeah… yeah, I'm fine." She's been frozen, widowed, and stabbed all in the course of a day, but she's fine. She has to be, she can't afford to be anything else. "Just… just… shocked. And a little bit bleeding, but this is mostly shock right here."

"Oh. I'd offer a stimpack, but we don't have a whole lot in terms of medical supplies. Probably won't for a while." A pause. "Listen. I know you probably just recently left your Vault and that all of this is taking some getting used to. I know the sort of world we live in now. But we could really use your help. And then maybe we can help you, huh? What brought you out here?"

"My…" River has to pause to take a deep, shuddering breath, to try and focus on the goal in front of her right now. She looks up at Preston, pushing herself away from the battered wall that is threatening to give underneath her weight. "My son. My baby boy, his name's Shaun, he's not even a year old, and they took him, they kidnapped my son, I… I need to find him."

"Damn," Preston shakes his head, "that's messed up. I'm sorry, I know how people can be. We can't do anything right now, but if you can help us get out of here, we'll do what we can. We were trying to find a safe place to settle down, figured Concord would be as good a place as any. Those Raiders proved us wrong; they've been chasing us since we reached the outskirts of the city. There are going to be more of them coming, probably with the guy leading them. But, well, we do have one idea."

"Okay," River says, "let's hear it." Sure as hell can't be worse than anything she could come up with.

Preston turns to nod at a sun-tanned man dressed in a thin, grimy t-shirt and a pair of overalls bent over a terminal. "Sturges, tell her."

The man straightens up, wiping a sheen of sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand. "You see that crashed vertibird on the roof?" he asks, his voice a slow Southern drawl not commonly found this far north. (At least, it _hadn't_ been; for all River knows, Southern is the new New England when it comes to accents.) "It's old school. _Real_ old school, we're talking a Pre-War prototype, not the kind they got in the Capital. Well, it looks like one of its passengers left behind a seriously sweet goody. We're talkin' a full suit of cherry T-45 power armor. Military issue."

Power armor. That's something familiar, something she at least knows _of._ "That's supposed to provide some really good protection, right? Nate… m-my husband, he… he said that bullets bounce off that thing like a quarter off a trampoline. Why're you waiting until now to use it?"

Sturges snorts. "Look around. Anyone here look like they're up to runnin' around in a suit of power armor?" River glances around the room and acknowledges that the hollow-eyed man favoring his right leg and the frail old woman gently scratching behind the dog's ears may not be the best choice to launch an offensive. "You're the best chance we've had since we got here. Least, you certainly look it. Those muscles ain't just for show, right?"

River manages to actually smirk at that. "No," she answers, folding her arms across her chest to emphasize the thick musculature of her biceps and shoulders, "they are not. So, this power armor'll help keep the bullets out of me, then?"

Sturges shoots a grin of his own right back. "Oh, it gets better," he says. "Get the suit, and you can rip the minigun right off the vertibird. Something about the hydraulics in the armor make rippin' through steel easier than tearin' through paper. Do that, and those Raiders get an express ticket to Hell. You dig?"

She wasn't an expert in firearms by any means, but miniguns have never struck her as the type of weapon that required a delicate touch or a Robin Hood aim to use. "Now that's something I can get behind," she says. "So, get the suit, get the minigun, and…" _And kill some people._ River has to swallow the rising lump in her through and reminds herself that the people she's going to have to face down would just as happily kill _her_ if given the chance. "And take care of the raider problem. Seems straightforward enough, sans the part where I actually have no idea how to _use_ a set of power armor."

"It'll be easy enough," Sturges says, waving away her concerns. "Just open it up and step in, it knows what it's doin'. But," he adds, and River feels her heart sink because of _course_ there's a "but," there always is, "there's one hitch. The suit's out of juice. Probably been dry for a hundred years."

"Juice?"

"Fusion energy. Those old T-45 sets are tough, but they ain't exactly known for bein' efficient, if you catch my meaning. The things damn near eat through fusion cores. It can be powered up if you've got the right source of energy, but we're a bit stuck there."

"What we need," Preston says, stepping back into the conversation, "is an old pre-war F.C., a standardized fusion core. You know, your high-grade, long-term nuclear battery? They were used by the military and some companies way back when. And we know right where to find one."

Well, that's wonderfully convenient. "Where is it?"

"Downstairs," Sturges says, "powerin' the generators for this place. Problem is, we can't get to the damn thing. It's locked behind a terminal-access security gate." He lets out a small sigh. "Look, I fix stuff. I tinker. Give me an old fan, a clock and some duct tape and I'll have a workin' generator for you in an hour. Bypassin' security systems ain't exactly my forte. If you're feelin' up to it, you could give it a shot."

River knew as much about computer systems as the next layman, but they didn't exactly have a whole lot of options going in. "Okay," she says, gesturing to the cut on her side. The bleeding has slowed, and it wasn't exactly life-threatening to behind with, but it still stings like fuck whenever she moves, and the dried blood covering both her and her jumpsuit cannot be sanitary. "Just give me a minute to clean this up, okay? Make sure I'm not going to get an infection and die."

"Yeah, you take care of yourself real quick." Sturges nods towards a side table with a bottle and cloth left on it. "There's a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a rag over there that we used to clean up Marcy's head after a real close call. Better be quick, though, no tellin' when the rest of the raiders'll catch up."

"Right." River staggers over to the couch where the old woman is sitting and sets herself down, grabbing the alcohol and the rag and getting to work. It's not a _pleasant_ experience, and she'd have happily taken actual disinfectant over this, but you do what you've got with what you have. As she cleans up her wound, wincing at the way the abrasive cloth feels against her tender flesh, she can't help but feel the gazes of the refugees turned on her. She's not unused to people watching her; she was a boxer, after all, and people always enjoyed going to the gym to see her at work. But this wasn't the gym, and the stares boring into her back weren't of the eager kind.

It's not long before someone speaks up. It's one of the refugees whose names she doesn't know, a flannel-clad woman sharp of face and voice. "Look at this. We need help, and we get a Vault Dweller? What's she going to do in that stupid jumpsuit? Bleed to death?"

"I hope not," River retorts before thinking, turning a dark-eyed glare at the woman. "This fabric is just _so nice,_ and so very expensive to boot. I'd hate to get blood on it." Sarcasm probably isn't the best way to go right now, not when everyone's so tense, but between that and having a mental breakdown, it's the safer defense mechanism. "Listen, I'm going to do the best I can to get all of you out of here as quickly and as safely as possible, okay? I… I can't promise anything, I'm a bit over my fucking head here, but I'll try my damndest."

The woman scoffed. "Well, look at you, playing hero. Do you even know how bad it is up here? How long have you been out of your damn Vault? A few days? A week?"

River hesitates for a moment before admitting, "A few hours." She wonders how many other Vaults there had been across the country, and just how many people had been frozen like her. How many people got out, and when?

"Are you kidding me?" The woman turns her glare on Preston. "You wanna put all our lives in the hand of a woman who didn't go climbing out of her vault until a few fours ago?"

"She's the best chance we have right now, Marcy," Preston says evenly. "I'd rather put my faith in her than take my chances with the raiders."

"What, because Mama Murphy had one of her 'visions?'"

Sturges pipes up, having returned to tinkering with the terminal. "Mama Murphy's led us pretty well so far. Current circumstances nonwithstandin'."

Marcy lets out a scoff of frustration before stalking off to the far end of the room, where the hollowed-eyed man is huddled against the wall. "Come on, Jun, let me take a look at your ankle."

"Marcy, you don't have to do that. I-it's fine, really."

"No it's not, let me see."

As the two devolve into a terse, whispered discussion, River turns back to her wound. It seems that she's done all she can to make sure that nothing nasty has gotten into her blood that will make her sick or give her a third arm. All she can hope for now is that she was lucky enough to clean it in time.

Not that her luck's been all that kind to her so far.

A thin hand falls upon her shoulder, and River looks up to see the old woman looking at her with a knowing smile. Her eyes are very, _very_ blue, almost looking clouded over; she'd think the woman blind if it weren't for the way that her gaze was transfixed directly on River. "Don't you worry, kid," she says. Her voice is slow, lethargic, almost reminiscent of the way a rowboat rocks on the water. "We're all just a little tired from the raiders, that's all. We'll be better when we reach the sanctuary. You will be, too. I can see it."

"T-thanks…?" _I think._

The old woman, whom River assumes to be Mama Murphy, lets out a satisfied hum. "You're not what I expected Dogmeat would find in that little neighborhood. But oh, so much better."

River glances down at the German Shepherd leaning against her shins. "Oh! He's your dog, then?" _Dogmeat, huh? Hell of a name._

Mama Murphy shakes her head. "Naw, he ain't my dog," she says. "No, sir. Dogmeat, he's what you'd call his own man. You can't own a free spirit like that. Be he chooses my friends, and sticks with 'em. He sees something in you, kid, and he'll stay by you now. I saw it."

"You… 'saw it?'" Far be it from her to question the words of a madwoman she's just met, but… no, she's definitely going to question the words of a madwoman she's just met.

To her credit, Mama Murphy takes her incredulity in stride. "It's the chems, kid," she explains, leaning town to scratch at the spot between Dogmeat's shoulder blades. "They give ol' Mama Murphy the Sight. Been that way for as long as I can remember. I can see a bit of what was, and what will be. And even what is, right now." She moves her hand from River's shoulder to the spot just over her heart. "Like you, kid. There's a piece of you missing, left behind in the burning and the freezing. You're a little bit empty inside, but you'll find something new to fill it."

River feels her blood running a bit cold. Burning and freezing? That sounded like… but how could she know about... "W-well," she stammers, pulling away from the old woman's touch and getting to her feet. "it doesn't take a psychic to figure out that I'm a little bit out of fucking sorts right now. If you'll excuse me, I need to go fetch that core from the basement, so—"

Mama Murphy's hand closes around her wrist. For someone who looks so fragile and so small in her ratty, oversized jacket and thick scarf, the old woman's got one hell of an iron grip. "There's something coming, kid," she says. "Drawn by the noise, and the chaos. And it… is… angry. Be careful."

Well.

That's not good.

"I will… keep that in mind." Deflated a little by the realization that, mad as she may seem, the old woman's only trying to look out for the refugees, River gently tugs her wrist out of Mama Murphy's grip. "Thanks for letting me know. I really should get to that power core, though."

"Of course. I'm tired now, anyway." Mama Murphy leans back in against the couch, eyes half closed as she watches River leave with Dogmeat loyally trailing after.

When she reaches the basement, she realizes that Sturges hadn't been kidding when he said that the security gate in the basement barricading entry into the generator room was locked tight; River loses track of how many times she is locked out of the terminal while it resets. "You insufferable hunk of scrap metal," she growls, kicking at the gate after the computer beeps indignantly at her for getting the password wrong and locks her out _again_. "What the fuck is your problem? It's not like anyone's really using the generator anyway! There are people upstairs who need a power core, or at least that's what they said, I still don't understand any of this. There's a guy called Preston who's dressed like he came strutting out of the seventeen-hundreds, a crazy old woman who knows shit she _should not know_ , and apparently the best way to keep them all from getting turned into Swiss _fucking_ cheese is to stick some nuclear energy into a suit of power armor, get inside said suit, and then gun down who knows how many people!"

The terminal doesn't answer. Of course it doesn't, it's a terminal. She still rants. "I honestly don't know who's the bigger idiot, here; those people upstairs for asking me to go shoot some people despite _knowing_ that I'm not used to this, because apparently traumatized and confused women in Vault-Tec jumpsuits are a common enough fucking occurrence that they instantly realize what's going on, or me for being like, 'sure, random people I don't know! I'll completely put my mission to find my son on hold to save your asses even thought for all I know _you_ guys could be the merciless raiders and the other guys could just be trying to avenge their loved ones or something! Why? Because a _dog_ showed me the way!'"

Dogmeat whimpers.

"Oh, don't you worry, I'm not mad at you, boy. I'm mad at myself, mostly, for getting all caught up with this mess when I should be, you know, _looking for Shaun_." There's a faint whirring sound followed by a series of beeps letting her know the terminal is unlocked, and she gets back to work. "Still, Preston said that he and his friends might be able to help me if I get them out of here, and he certainly seems like the trustworthy type. And why am I even worried about it, anyway? Just because it's the apocalypse doesn't mean we shouldn't be going all Good Samaritan for those who need it. If I can help him and the others, I should, no doubting about it. And I would be _very fucking happy_ to help if this _fucking terminal_ opened up and let me open the _fucking door!_ " She punctuates each curse word with a slam of her fist against the wall, practically breaking the computer's keyboard as she hammers down on the enter key.

 _Beep._ The terminal grants her access.

"Oh. Neat." She wastes no time in getting the gate unlocked, prying it open and making a beeline to the generator. The fusion core is bit hard to miss, a fist-sized black-and-yellow cylinder that is easy enough to remove, and as soon as it's in hand, generator is powering down with a whir, she heads back up to where the refugees are waiting, wincing at every dangerous creak of the stairs and walkways. "Got the fusion core," she says, holding it up for Sturges and Preston to see.

"That's good," Preston says, glancing towards one of the dirt-covered windows, "because the other side just got backup. We're gonna need you to hurry. Once you jack that core into the power armor and grab that minigun, those raiders'll know they picked the wrong fight. I'll cover you from the balcony. Good luck out there."

"Thanks," River said, already making her way towards the door. "I think I'm going to need it."

* * *

The power armor certainly looks impressive, even for its age, dark gray steel catching the light of the setting sun and bathing itself in a fiery hue. A good bit taller and wider than her, she feels intimidated just by looking at it, and she _knows_ in its about as threatening as a tin can. _I'm going to have to get in that?_ A chill runs up and down her body at the thought. She's already been inside one metal coffin, thank you. "You'd better fucking work," she tells the armor as she goes around back to there the core jack is. She inserts the fusion core, hitting it a couple times to ensure it is firmly secured and will not fall out on her when she needs it the most, she twists the valve on the back and steps back to let it open up.

Down below, she can here the indignant shouting of more raiders as they group up near the museum's entrance. "Welp. Moment of truth. You stay here with the others, boy," she tells Dogmeat, who tilts his head at her. "Hold down the fort for me, okay?" He barks his understanding. "Good boy." Taking a deep breath, River steps into the power armor.

That moment when it first begins to close in around her is the worst, and it takes everything she's got not to immediately rear backwards and lose a limb for the trouble. Even as it snaps into place and the HUD flickers to life, she is hyper-aware of how it sits on her body, how _heavy_ it is and how much it feels like it could collapse inward and crush her at any moment. She takes a step forward. It's slow, like a giant's step, but it's still movement, and the knowledge that she is at the very least able to move around is comforting enough for her to get her shit together and head towards the crashed vertibird where the minigun awaits. She grabs ahold of it, feeling its weight and figuring out where to get the most leverage, and pulls.

Sturges hadn't been kidding when he'd said that it would be like tearing through paper. The minigun gives way easily, and she has to quickly correct her balance. Across the street, on the roof of one of the stores, a voice sounds out, "Up here! Boss, we've got someone up here! Power armor!"

 _Shit._ "Stay safe," River hisses to Dogmeat before stepping forward.

There's a rough chuckle from the ground, a voice that sounds like a cheese grater if a cheese grater were a voice. "Heh. Thought that some fancy armor could protect you, Minuteman? You're gonna pay for what you've do—" The familiar sound of a raider musket cuts through his words, and as the raider on the roof crumples River knows that Preston is making good on his promise of supporting fire. "What the hell?! But if you're there, then who's…?"

River decides to answer that question _personally_. She steps off the roof and for a brief moment is in total freefall, her heart flying up to her throat as she drops. Then she hits the ground with a _boom_ so tremendous that the concrete beneath her buckles and breaks. She taps into that same angry resolve that drove her as she escaped the Vault, the same anger that drives her in her search for Shaun, because that fury is what's going to get her through this fight in one piece. "Hey," she says, her voice filtered through the helmet of the power armor as she hoists up the minigun. "Heard you were looking for a little payback."

The leader of the raiders is a tall, long-faced man with a series of nasty scars running across his face and Abraxo-bleached hair that's been shaved and spiked upwards. He sneers at the sight of her, and she almost has to give him credit for not being cowed by the very unhappy woman in the very big armor. "So, you're the one that's gone and killed all my boys?" he says, pulling something small and round off of the back of his belt. "Bet I'll get a nice bonus when I bring Jared back your head on a stick."

He throws the spherical object and dives behind cover just as River realizes what it is. "Shit!" Instincts kick in, and she jerks the minigun upwards and opens fire on the grenade while it's still in the air. The effect of the resulting explosion is negligible, with bits of shrapnel bouncing harmlessly off of River's torso plate as she turns her attention to the group of raiders that the Abraxo-haired man brought with him. With Preston backing her up, sniping the ones two far away for her to get a good focus on, she opens fire, the minigun screaming in her arms as she unleashes a hail of bullets on those that are trying to do the same to her. They get a couple good shots in; she can feel the left leg of her power armor lock up slightly as a particularly sharp-eyed raider manages to hit one of the hydraulics. But ultimately it's a one-sided battle, and within minutes the road is completely cleared, with bullet casings and bodies littering the ground.

She examines the carnage around her, forcing down the bile churning in her stomach with thoughts of how _they were going to do the exact fucking thing to you_ and _this is the world we live in now_ and _you can't save your son if you're a corpse._

She wonders what it was like when the bombs first dropped. If the world devolved slowly of if everything turned to hell all at once.

She notices that the Abraxo-haired man isn't among the corpses. She thinks she simply missed him at first, but with hair like that he should be easy to spot. _Shit,_ she thinks, _did he make it inside the museum?_ She whirls around to warn Preston, but before she can, she hears a _clck_ that even someone who's only seen grenades in propaganda-fueled war movies would be able to recognize. This time, the explosion _does_ affect her, with the force of the blast sending her staggering and the noise ringing in her ears. Disoriented, she barely notices the man charging out from behind a car until he is already there next to her, bashing pipe wrench against the underside of her helmet hard enough where she can feel it dent. _Strong bastard, Or shitty power armor. Either way, not good._ "Got you now, asshole," he hisses, raising the pipe for another blow. _Fuck, fuck fuck…!_

 _Pnnnnnnnow._ The Abraxo-haired man looks up at the rapidly-disintegrating pipe wrench in his hands, but he doesn't really have time to actually _do_ anything about it because River has reoriented herself and shifts the weight of her minigun so that she can lash out with a right hook to his face. She can feel the give as the bones under his cheek crack from the force of her strike, and it's _his_ turn to fall backwards, shouting obscenities at her all the way. "Careful," she snarls, moral objections now completely thrown out the window in the face of simple, stark life-or-death. "Don't want to agitate that. Maybe put some ice on it, I've found that helps in my experience."

"Fuck you, lady!" he shouts as his gets to his feet, cradling his cheek. "Gonna make you pay for that! Jared and his whole gang, they're gonna make you and you stupid fucking Minutemen friends suffer!"

There's a faint tremor underneath their feet. "Oh, is that them?" River asks. She still has ammo left enough, but sun has already dipped below3 her rooftops and her already mediocre aim is _not_ going to be helped by the cover of darkness.

But the expression on the man's face is not one of smug victory, but of confusion and fear. "N-no, I thought that was something you asshole were… What the fuck is that?!" Another tremor, followed by an bestial snarl, and his face goes as white as his hair. "Oh, fuck this!" He turns tail and bolts, not sparing her a second glance as he runs down the street.

 _What the hell has got this guy so worried?_ River looks up and over her shoulder to shoot Preston a baffled look underneath her helmet, only to find that he too has a wide-eyed look or fear on his face. "Get inside!" he shouts. "Now!"

"What? Why?!"

Her questions is answered with mighty, metallic _thmp_. She turns back to the street to see the raider stopped dead in his tracks, gaping as the metal grates covering the sewers beneath are thrown wide open and the most _monstrous_ nightmare River could have ever imagined crawls out, with thick, curled horns, claws so sharp and so long that when the beast hauls itself upwards they dig into the concrete like it was soft dirt, and a reptilian face that looks like it was sculpted by someone with a _really_ sick sense of humor. It rears back, revealing its full height at "really fucking tall" and lets out a furious roar that shakes River to her very core.

Suddenly the cockroaches in the Vault don't seem so bad.

The Abraxo-haired raider lets out a shriek of horror and starts running again, but the beast… whatever it is… is faster, gaining on him in an instant and tearing into him mercilessly. His screams of agony trap River in place, the horror in front of her freezing her as quickly as surely as the cryo chamber had. About her, she can heard Preston shout, _"Deathclaw!"_ but it doesn't shake her. The only thing that rouses her from her trance of fear is when the raider's screams _stop_ and the Deathclaw stands once more, its snout and talons dripping with red. The only thing that gets her actually moving is the way it turns and transfixes its sharp gaze directly on her, yellow eyes glowing with a yet-unsated hunger.

And the thing that _stops_ her from moving fast enough is, ironically enough, the very thing meant to protect her. The leg hydraulics that had gotten hit by the raider are unyielding, the barely bending as she hobbles towards the museum entrance. Behind her, she can hear the monster roar and the thunderous sound of its claws against the ground, and turns around just as it slams into her, driving her into the ground in a cloud of concrete. The minigun flies out of her hands and bounces out of arm's reach.

All the wind has been knocked out of her, her limbs aching as she lays there with the monster looming just over her. _If I have to guess what being hit with a train feels like,_ River thinks, _this would be it._ The beast isn't done with her yet. It rakes its claws across her chest, trying to penetrate the thick metal of the power armor, but when that fails it settles for picking her up by the through and slamming her back down into the ground. She hears a faint _pop_ ping sound from her leg and feels the plating and hydraulics of the power armor fall away, leaving only the frame caging her limb. _Well, that's just great. My leg's practically got a target painted on it now…_ But she can move it now, she realizes. The faulty mechanics limit her mobility have crumbled under the weight of being slammed against the concrete underneath her. So if she can just get to her feet…

The monster pulls her up again, preparing further usage of her as a makeshift sledgehammer, and River reacts, kicking outwards and knocking it against the jaw hard enough to force it to drop her. As it rears back with a furious screech, she takes the opportunity to scramble over to where the minigun has dropped and grabs it, swinging it about and opening fire. The monster is driven back at first, but that's when it drops down onto all fours and starts to weave back and forth across the street from cat to car because of _course_ a giant mega-strong lizard monster with claws like knives wasn't enough of a problem, it had to be _fast_ and _smart_ as well. It lunges at her again, and she barely manages to keep it at bay by knocking it away with the barrel of the minigun. _Shit, shit, shit!_ She needs a better plan, one that the monster can't dodge.

She shoots a furtive glance towards the mangled remains of what had once been the raider leader, and an idea starts to form in her mind. She ducks underneath another swipe of the beast's clause and runs towards the corpse, hoping all the while that the Abraxo-haired man had more than just the two grenades. She fumbles at the tattered remnants of the belt, her fingers clumsy in the power armor. Her hand closes around a metal sphere, and she lets out a sigh of relief. "All right," she says, turning around the face the beast that is rearing around for another attack. "You wants some? Come and get it."

The monster regards her for a couple seconds, swaying back and forth as it seems to contemplate whether or not the metal meal is worth all the trouble of getting kicked in the jaw. Presumably, it hasn't had to deal with prey that fought back for this long before. Behind it, on the museum balcony, River can see Preston lining up his sights, still hesitating to take the shot. She doesn't blame him; there's no guarantee that shooting the thing won't just piss it off even more.

Then, after what feels like an eternity, the monster makes up its mind and lunges forward on all fours. River grabs the pin of the grenade, but doesn't pull it yet. The monster reaches her and is on top of her in a matter of instants in a flurry of fangs and twisted horns and foot-long claws, its strong grip wrapping around her left arm and squeezing tight enough to crush the frame. Agony shoots up her arm as the metal traps her limb like a vice, but she simply grits her teeth, pulls the pin, and shoves the grenade right down the creature's gaping maw. "Try that out for size," she hisses, kicking the beast away and staggering as far as she can to a safe distance before her legs give way and she crumples to the ground.

Out of the side of her helmet's HUD, she can see the monster right itself, its jaws still clamped tightly around the grenade and a look of bemusement crossing its twisted features for a brief moment before the grenade detonates in a fiery explosion of shrapnel and gore. Rivers winces as pieces of metal bounce off of her armor and a spray of red decorates her HUD.

The world is quiet for a couple minutes, save for the sound of her own labored breathing echoed within her helmet. Then there's the _click-clack-click-clack_ of dulled claws scraping against concrete, and a familiar fuzzy face comes into view. "Hey, buddy," River says, voice strained. "Thought I told you to stay inside with the others."

Dogmeat gives a happy bark and licks at her helmet.

"Ha ha, okay, yeah, I'm glad to see you too." She pulls herself into a sitting position with a groan, acutely aware of the pain in her left arm and the way her left leg is protected only by the frame of the armor. She'd gotten out of that mess by the skin of her teeth. Around here, the place looks like it'd been hit with a second bomb, with pieces of debris lying everywhere from the carnage done by the minigun, the grenades, and the monster's rampage. "Looks like we really made a mess of the place, didn't we boy?" she mutters. Dogmeat whimpers. "Yeah, you're right. Let's get inside."

* * *

 **A/N: "Oh, this'll be a _short_ chapter," I said. "There's not a whole lot going on, I'm sure it'll only be around 6K words." Blaggggh. Never underestimate my ability to wordcount. I blame River's stress the bright side, if I were doing NaNoWriMo a month late, this would do wonders for my daily wordcount.**

 **Fun Facts!**

 **FFFM #6: When you meet Dogmeat at the Red Rocket before completing When Freedom Calls, Dogmeat's idle animation is him heading in the direction of Concord, no doubt to lead you to where Preston and the Quincy survivors are holed up. Good dog, best friend.**

 **FFFM #7: So anyone who's read any of my other stuff might know that I struggle a bit with action sequences. So I'm try not to draw too much focus to it unless the fight is actively important to the plot. That's why the fight against the inside raiders is sort of just glossed over in favor of stuff like character development and Deathclaw exploding. (Didn't stop this thing from being 9K words even without the author's notes, though.)**


	4. All That Remains

**A/N - I'm back with a new chapter! Man, I can't believe I have fourteen favorites on this thing already. You guys are making me blush over here. As always, thank you so much to those that have faved, alerted, and left reviews!**

* * *

 **Chapter Four – All That Remains**

* * *

"What the – _ow,_ fuck – _hell_ was that thing?"

"Deathclaw," Sturges says as he pries the mangled pieces of Power Armor off of River's injured arm. Trying to get out of the suit had proven to be extremely difficult with the frame crushed around her bicep the way it is. She's _definitely_ starting to feel the claustrophobia as Sturges gets to work on the frame itself, using a crowbar for leverage as her tries to bend the metal back into shape without causing her further injury. "Nasty critter, not the sort you wanna tangle with on a good day. You're lucky it wasn't the type that can turn invisible."

River gapes at him. "They can turn _invisible?_ " she sputters, her voice jumping up an octave or twelve. Dogmeat, sitting at her feet, looks up and tilts his head in confusion. _Get used to it, boy,_ she thinks, _I get the feeling I'm going to be making that noise a lot._

"Well, not really, and not all of them." Sturges gives the frame an experimental yank and frowns when it doesn't budge. "Biology ain't exactly my area of expertise, but from what I remember it's some sort of natural camouflagin' thing that a certain type of them can do. Neat party trick, so long as you ain't on the menu."

"Wh-wha… Why?! Who looks at one of _those_ things—" She gestures wildly towards the museum door, where the remains of the Deathclaw still wait outside, "and thinks, 'do you know what this irradiated killing machine needs? A _fucking stealth mode!'_ Please tell me that's the most dangerous thing out there, because I don't think I'll be able to handle it if there's something worse out there. I literally may just give up and go back to the Vault."

"Well, if I had to put it to numbers…" There's a grinding sound as Sturges manages to get part of the frame partially straightened out. "I'd say that yeah, you don't get much more dangerous that a pissed-off Deathclaw. How's that feel? Can you move your arm?"

River tries. "It's still a little tight, and everything sort of hurts… think I might have reopened my side somewhere along the way… but I'm not trapped anymore. Think it's safe to get out of this deathtrap?"

"Yeah, I figure. Come on, you're gonna want to stand up." Sturges takes a step back so that River can get to her feet. "Lemme just turn the valve here, and…"

The hissing of the hydraulics and the feeling of fresh air against the back of her neck as the Power Armor is the sweetest sensation to River, and she all but falls backwards in her rush to get out, landing solidly on the ground and immediately hissing through clenched teeth as pain blossoms from both her arm and her side. " _Shit,_ son of a…" She reaches to her injured arm instinctively, wincing as her fingers brush against skin that is no doubt turning purple underneath her jumpsuit. She can still move it, so she figures that it's not broken or dislocated. The bruises are going to be there for _days,_ though, and are probably going hurt worse than her usual post-workout soreness. As she'd thought, the wound on her side has reopened, blood slowly trickling down her waist. _Codsworth's going to go into conniptions when he sees me in the state I'm in._ "So, can I never fight one of those things again? That would be _fantastic_."

A voice pipes up from the gate leading inwards. "I definitely wouldn't complain." River looks up from her position half-sprawled on the floor to see Preston leading the rest of the settlers out into the main lobby, with Mama Murphy's arm looped through the crook of his elbow for support while Marcy lingers close to Jun, a sharp gaze turned towards his weak leg. "How are you holding up?" Preston asks, helping Murphy sit down. "Things were looking pretty bad down there for a moment. When that Deathclaw came out of the sewers..." He trails off, shaking his head in disbelief. "That was some quick thinking with the grenade."

"Lucky odds, more like. If that bleach-headed asshole had used one more grenade, I'd have been a real goner. As it is, my arm's going to hurt like hell for a while. Always fun." She glances over at Mama Murphy. "Y'know, when you told me that something big was gonna show up, I didn't think you meant 'right this very instant, get in the power armor if you want to live.'"

Mama Murphy shoots an apologetic smile her way. "Sorry, kid. Sometimes the Sight ain't so clear."

"Nah, no need to apologize." River pushes herself up into a sitting position; the way she was laying was starting to cramp her neck, and she's in enough pain as-is. "I doubt I'd be able to prepare myself for that shitstorm even if I did know just how imminent it was. Those things just weren't the sort of thing we had back... well, back..." Back _before._ Before the bombs dropped, before she had been shoved in an icebox, before Nate... Her hand closes around the wedding ring and the holotape in her Vault suit pocket, miraculously undamaged from the fight. She's glad; if she'd lost the tape before she even had the chance to listen to it...

If Preston notices the way she falters, he's polite enough not to comment. "Well, either way, that was a pretty amazing display. I'm glad you're on our side."

"Feeling's mutual. You're a damn good shot, Preston." She wouldn't have even made it this far if he hadn't covered her ass with the raiders earlier. "Are you guys going to be okay, now? I don't think there's anything else coming, it should be safe for you to get to wherever it is you're going."

Preston nods. "For a while, anyway. We should probably get out of Concord, though. Deathclaws tend to travel alone, so I'm not too concerned about another one of those showing up. But there's always the risk of more raiders." He pauses for a second for shifting his hold on his laser musket, resting the stock against the ground. "Listen. When you asked about the Minutemen... one thing you should know about us is that we help out our friends." He digs into one of the pockets of his trench coat and pulls out a drawstring bag. "So here. For everything you've done. Thank you."

The bag jingles a bit when he drops it into her hands, and River peers inside expecting to see coins, possibly unfamiliar post-nuclear Future Coins or whatever. Instead she sees... Nuka-Cola caps? "Er... I appreciate the thought, but I'm not sure how your bottle cap collection is gonna be of much use out here."

Preston blinks, a confused expression passing over his face for a minute before the realization hits him. "Oh, right, you're from a vault! Sorry, I forgot all of this is new to you. We use bottle caps as currency. They're durable and pretty easy to come by, so you shouldn't have too much problem finding enough to make ends meet. That'll get you started."

 _Bottle caps as currency, huh? Well, I've heard of worse ways to handle global socio-economic collapse. Actually, no I haven't, what the hell._ "The future is weird," River mutters. "I appreciate it, though. And I mean it, this time, not in the sarcastic 'this man just handed me a bunch of bent circles what do I do with this' way. I, uh... I guess I've got a whole lot to learn about this new world, huh?"

"It's not always easy," Preston agrees. "A lot of vault dwellers don't survive long out here. Between the radiation, the creatures, and the people, there's a whole lot going on every day. But if you're half as good at adapting as you are at killing Deathclaws, I think you're going to be just fine."

"I... thanks." She's not sure if she believes him quite yet; she's still _her_ , and the apocalypse is something too big even for her. But he has to be right. She _needs_ to be just fine, because that's what Shaun needs her to be. Hell, she'd fight a dozen Deathclaws if it meant saving her little boy. She wouldn't like it one bit, but she'd fucking do it.

"Hey." Preston's voice cuts through her thoughts. "You look pretty battered up. Maybe you should come with us to Sanctuary. You could get some rest, let your side heal up. And we could definitely use your help getting settled."

River's head jerks upwards, locking gazes with him. "Sanctuary?"

"Mm-hm. It's supposed to be this place up to the—"

"Up to the northwest, past a Red Rocket and across a bridge?"

Preston is taken aback. "Uh, yeah. You've heard of it?"

 _Well, I'll be damned._ A bright grin stretches across River's face, an actual grin as she realizes that even full-scale atomic annihilation couldn't keep humanity down forever. "Well, fuck me if that's not one hell of a coincidence. I was planning on heading back there anyway. Yeah, I'll join you. Can't promise on sticking around too long, I do still have a son to find and all, but I've got business there and I'd really not make the walk about alone in the dark." She needs to talk to Codsworth, let him know that Shaun isn't in Concord, that maybe he never was. She needs to know where to search next."

Preston returns the grin, as relieved as a man can get, and Mama Murphy speaks up from the bench. "Oh, that's wonderful," she drawls. "Ah, but there's more to your destiny, isn't there? I've seen it. And I know your pain." Anyone within half a mile probably knows River's pain by now; she hasn't exactly been keeping her emotions under lock and key. But she stays quiet and lets the old woman speak. _She was right before._ "You're a woman out of time. Out of hope. But all's not lost. I can feel your son's energy, sweetie, as bright as yours. He's alive."

It's the best goddamn news River's heard in her whole life.

She drops down to her knees by Mama Murphy's feet, gently taking the old woman's frail, wrinkled hands in her own. "Can you feel where he is? Can you tell me where my son is?!"

"Sorry, kid, I wish I knew, I really do," Mama Murphy replied with a shake of her head. "But it's not like I can see your son, not truly. I can just... feel his life force, his energy. He's out there."

River felt the elation slowly drain from her. Deflating, she slumps against Mama Murphy's knees. "Then how do you know it's even him?" she whispers. "It could be anyone's life energy."

She feels Mama Murphy tug a hand from her grip and lay it on top of her head, stroking her dark hair. "Because I can feel _yours_. You care so much about finding him that your soul is reaching out to his, across the Wasteland. When you see him, you'll understand. And even I don't need the Sight to tell you where you should start looking."

River looks up at her. "What do you mean?"

"The great, green jewel of the Commonwealth," Mama Murphy explains. "Diamond City. The biggest settlement around."

"I...Christ, I don't even know where that is. I don't know what _anything_ is anymore."

"It's down southeast," Preston interjects. "In the ruins of Boston. Between the security and the signs, you won't be able to miss it."

"Look, kid," Mama Murphy says with a weary sigh, "I'm tired now. Maybe you bring me some chems later, the Sight will paint a clearer picture."

"No," Preston says firmly. "Mama Murphy, we've talked about this. That junk's gonna kill you. The Sight's not worth that."

"Oh, shush, Preston," Mama Murphy scolds, waving away his words of worry. "We're all gonna die eventually, that's just part of life. We're gonna need the Sight if we wanna make it in Sanctuary. And our new friend her, she's gonna need it, too."

"But—"

" _Preston._ "

Preston falls silent, the concern still etched across his face. After a few moments of silence, Sturges speaks up from his spot over by the power armor. "So, what're we gonna do with this? It's a bit banged up, but replace the plating and fix up the frame on the arm and it'll work good as new. And I don't reckon it'd be too smart to leave it sittin' where any raider with a vengeance can come an' take it. Got enough of 'em runnin' around with that makeshift stuff as it is."

"You've got a good point," Preston says, "and a set of power armor could be useful if we need to defend ourselves like this again. But I don't think any of us will be able to move it without getting inside, and bringing it to Sanctuary with us might just paint a bigger target on our backs. Armor like that is valuable, and there are a lot of scavengers who'll do anything to get their hands on a full set."

"Hm." Sturges reaches up and lightly knocks at the armor's chestpiece, a faint frown digging into the crease at the corner of his mouth. "What about that Red Rocket station? Most've those places have a garage of some sort. We could store it there. Though that still leaves us the problem of _movin'_ the damn thing…"

"I can move it," River says, getting to her feet and rolling her sore shoulder with a sharp wince. As several pairs of eyes turn towards her, she elaborates. "It's be an all-day project and we'd have to wait a bit until my arm and my side are healed up, but I can probably get that thing down to the Rocket." It'll mean that the bastards who took Shaun will have a few day's lead, but it's better than bringing him home only to find that someone like the Abraxo-haired man has taken the power armor and gone on a murderous rampage where she lives.

Besides, there's no way that Codsworth will let her go running out into the wasteland in her current state.

"Heh." Sturges shakes his head with an incredulous smirk. "You sure are somethin', I'll give you that. Most people out here wouldn't stick their necks so far out for a bunch've strangers, 'specially not when they've got problems of their own to deal with. Glad we ran into you. Or that you ran into us."

Marcy speaks up. "Yeah, yeah, she's a real hero of the wastes, we get it. Are we heading out or are we just going to stand around until our feet fall off?"

"Marcy's right," Preston says, nodding to the refugees before starting towards the doors. "It's time to head out."

* * *

They're out of Concord when Preston speaks up. "I wanted to ask you something."

River glances over at him. It's hard to read his expression in the dark, his features vaguely silhouetted by the light of the half-moon overhead. The nights aren't quite the same anymore, she notes. Even without all the light pollution from the city, there's still a haze overhead that blocks out most of the stars, leaving the sky a near-empty expanse of murky indigo. It's not completely star-less – she can still see some of the brighter, more noticeable constellations like the Big Dipper – but it's another reminder of just how much _less_ there is of everything. Less people, less noise, less life, less stars.

She drags her focus back to the man walking beside her, straightening up and pulling her hand away from her still-aching side. "Yeah?"

"When we were back in Concord," Preston begins, a note of caution lacing his level voice, "you said that you had to head 'back' to Sanctuary. I thought you only came out of your Vault today."

"I _did_. I…" River pauses. "How much do you know about the vaults, Preston?"

"Not much," Preston admits. "I've never been in one myself. I know that a lot of them were said to be shelters from the bombs back before the war, but they were actually experiments by the people who made them. They were designed to isolate groups of people, test how they would react to certain situations, stuff like that. Some vaults turned out all right, like yours, but others…" Preston shakes his head. "Well, let's just say there are a lot of empty vaults out there. Why do you ask?"

River's throat goes dry, and she can feel her stomach churn as the new information settles in. She'd managed to figure out that Vault-Tec did _not_ have the best interests of the people at mind when they put her and her neighbors on ice, but to know that what happened to her was just some fucking science experiment gone wrong, one out of many… "Because… well, because my vault _didn't_ turn out all right," she says. "At all. You're probably not going to believe this, and I don't blame you because it sounds fucking ridiculous, but the vault I came from, Vault 111? It was a cryogenics lab. Everyone there had been frozen when the bombs first dropped, but there was a mutiny or something among the scientists before they could be woken up."

"Then how—" Preston freezes in the road, his eyes growing wide as the realization hits him. "Oh. _Oh._ So you're…?"

Yup. "Two hundred and thirty-five years old, give or take. I used to live in Sanctuary Hills, back before. That's why I know about it; my home's there, and Vault 111's just up the hill from it." She could see the Red Rocket in the distance, the eponymous spaceship a shadow rising up against the dark sky. "Speaking of, when we get there, the blue house with the Mister Handy working in the garden is… _was_ mine, so I'd really much rather people stay out of there. Lot of memories, you know, I… I…" She trails off, frowning at the ground. What is she going to do with her old house? Can she bear to step foot in there without Nate?

Even with only the dim light of the moon illuminating the survivors, she could see Preston's astonished expression underneath the brim of his hat. "Damn," he says. "I guess that really explains a lot. At first I thought it was all just you being from a vault – vault dwellers don't usually spend a whole of time on the surface – but there was still something about you that didn't quite make sense, you know? The way you talked, I mean. This must all be pretty confusing for you, huh?"

"It's been a hell of a day." Understatement of the century.

"I'll bet." They start walking again, the other refugees trailing behind them and Dogmeat trotting along by their feet, and it's a couple of minutes before Preston speaks again. "So how did you get out?"

"The people who… who took my son. Killed my husband." River's voice takes on a bitter edge to it. "They thawed our pods so that they could get to Shaun. Turns out they did a shit job of refreezing me."

"Oh. I-I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"No, it's fine. Okay, it's not fine, I woke up two hundred years in the future just to watch my husband get shot and my son get taken away to who-fucking-knows-where and I've spent the better part of today fighting off giant insects and murderous raiders and _that goddamn Deathclaw_ , so yeah, it's been a little less than fine. But it's not like you haven't had your own shit to deal with, and it's not like _you_ were the one who did all that." She can still remember the grizzled, scarred face of Shaun's kidnapper, his gravelly voice dragging along the inside of her skull like sandpaper. "Right now I just need to get back home."

"We're almost there. There's the Red Rocket right there, see? Sanctuary shouldn't be too far now." He gestures to the truck stop as they walk past, and River can't help but feel a small wave of relief wash over her. She's almost home. She can head home, go to sleep, and for a few brief hours forget that any of this has ever happened.

As they head up the hill and Sanctuary comes into view, Marcy speaks. "Is that it?" she asks, the disdain in her voice clear. River struggles between thoughts of _she's been through a lot, I haven't exactly been the most pleasant company either_ and _that is my home and if you make one more snide comment about it I'll suplex you into the fucking ground._

"Yup," Sturges said. "Don't worry, Marce. It's hard to tell what with it bein' so dark and all, but I'm countin' enough houses for all of us and then some."

"Well, that's something, at least."

"I-I'm sure it's not so bad, Marcy," Jun says. "There aren't supposed to be as many raiders in this part of the Commonwealth, so that's something, right?"

"We'll be able to look it over better in the morning," Preston says, starting forward. "Right now, though, I'm sure we could all use a good night's rest." River keeps pace with him, ignoring the sharp twinging in her side as she struggles to match pace with him.

"Preston, I'll reckon that that's the best damn thing I've heard since Quincy," Sturges says, a careful hand on Mama Murphy's shoulder as he guides the older woman past the hole in the 200-year-old wood, with Marcy and Jun following close behind. "Hey, what's that up there?"

River peers into the darkness to see the familiar faint glow of a jet-powered hovering system, and once again she can't help but smile. "That's my friend," she says. "His name's Codsworth, he was our housekeeper before the war. He's an absolute sweetheart, you'll see." She waves her good hand over back and forth over her head and calls out, "Codsworth! Over here!"

The Mr. Handy approaches, bobbing up and down as his ocular orbs all focus on her. "Oh, Miss River, it's been hours!" he exclaims. "I'd worried that those nasty ruffians down in Concord had k- _killed_ you!"

"Not for lack of trying," River admits, her hand falling back to her side.

Codsworth's gaze follows the movement. "Oh, ma'am, look at you, you're hurt! Oh, I feel absolutely awful, I should have been there. What happened?"

"Fought a bunch of raider and then blew up a giant murder lizard. But don't worry, it could have been worse." River grins. "Apparently it could have been an _invisible_ murder lizard."

Codsworth tuts. "Oh, ma'am, these things you say. You need to take care of yourself, you know. It won't do you and Master Shaun any good if you get seriously injured, you know."

River places a comforting hand on Codsworth, forcing a smile as best she could despite the harsh reminder that she could have died before even getting close to rescuing her son. "Trust me, Codsworth, I don't ever intend on fighting one of those things again," she assures him. "It wasn't all for nothing, though. I've got a good lead on where to start looking for Shaun, and I made a few new friends." She nods at Preston and the rest of the survivors. "Not bad for my first day in the future, hm?"

Codsworth perks up at the mention of friends, his eyestalks rotating about to focus on them. "Oh, it's been so long since we've had guests around! I'm afraid that the neighborhood's a bit of a mess right now; between the rubble and the _stains_ , it's a complete eyesore."

"That's fine," Preston interrupts. "I'm just happy to finally be here. So, you're her Mister Handy, huh?"

"That I am!" Codsworth practically beams. "The finest in domestic automatons that General Atomics has to offer. Why, I've served Miss River here for two hundred and eleven years!"

Sturges let out a low whistle. "And your directive programming ain't corrupted yet? Well, ain't you a tough fellow." He looks around. "I don't suppose you've got beds for five? We've been dead on our feet since the little scuffle in Concord."

Codsworth deflates slightly. "I'm afraid not, good sir," he admits, a little sheepish. "I hadn't been expecting guests, especially not so many. There _are_ a few mattresses and couch cushions that survived the blast, though they've been a bit strewn about."

"Hmph," Marcy grumbled. "Suppose that'll have to do. Come on, Jun, you need to get off your feet."

"I-I'm fine, Marcy, really, you don't have to worry about me."

"You think I didn't see you almost fall as we were crossing the bridge? I said we need to get you off your feet." Marcy practically drags Jun into the nearest intact house, no doubt to find someplace to prop his injured ankle on. River watches them leaving, noting that it's the Morales' house they enter. Or, at least, it used to be the Morales' house. _Guess it's Marcy and Jun's house, now_.

"Well, that's those two settled," Sturges said. "I'm goin' to find a place for me and Mama Murphy to settle. Don't suppose there's a house still standing that's got a workbench in the garage, is there? Reckon we're gonna need one if we wanna do any long-term livin' here."

"Smith had a couple of workbenches in his house, I think," River says. "Codsworth, is Smith's house still standing?"

"As a matter of fact, yes! Here, let me show you were it is." Codsworth floats off down the road and Sturges and Mama Murphy follow, leaving River and Preston standing in the road.

It's Preston that speaks first. "Guess this used to be a real nice place, huh?"

"Yeah." River looks down at the split concrete, the painted lines faded into near nothingness. "I fell in love with this place instantly back when we were looking for a house. Nate – my husband – he was a bit worried about it at first. Mostly concerned about my safety, you know, white suburbia and all that. But then he saw it in the fall and just like that, he was sold." Her voice drops to a near whisper, cracking with. "The trees used to be so beautiful, Preston."

"I heard they used to change color depending on what time of year it was."

He's _heard_. He's never seen the brilliant orange of a forest in October. "They did."

Preston shifts his weight a little, clearly struggling to find the right words to say in this situation. River appreciates the sentiment, but she knows it's a lost cause. What do you say to a woman who's been unwittingly frozen for two hundred years? Eventually, he settles on, "You should patch up that wound again and get some rest. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll find some stimpacks tomorrow and you won't have to worry about it. I'll run a patrol around the area, make sure that there's no immediate danger."

Changing the subject. Good move; River would rather focus on paying attention to her _physical_ wounds that the emotional ones. "Yeah. I'll be in the blue house over there if you need me." She nods towards her house, ragged but standing. "Good night, Preston."

"You too." Preston ambles off, his stance a little more relaxed than before, less "there is someone literally trying to kill me at this very moment" than he had been back at Concord. River watches him go. _As new neighbors go,_ she thinks, _I could do a hell of a lot worse than him._

She turns and makes her way towards her house, but her quick stride slows to a halt as she nears the threshold. The door is ajar, and through the small gap she can see the familiar shapes and shadows of her living room and kitchen. But it's… different. It's so, so different.

She can recall the day she and Nate had moved in. River had been a few months pregnant at the time, her belly bump starting to take a more prominent shape to it, and Nate had gone into full Protective Husband Mode, insisting that he be the one to move the heavier boxes of books and clothes into the bedroom. She'd found it equal parts endearing and annoying. _"I'm pregnant, Nate, not delicate,"_ she'd told him at the time. _"I can still pick things up."_

" _Of course you're not delicate. You're the toughest lady on the block,"_ Nate had replied, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his lips tenderly against her cheek. _"You could kick my ass any day of the week, pregnant or not. But still, just humor me, okay? I love you, and I wanna make sure you and the baby are okay. Let me do all the backbreaking work for now."_

" _It's not backbreaking if you do it right,"_ River had grumbled, though her voice had lost much of its edge as she leaned into his embrace. _"Lift with your knees, sweetie."_

Nate had chuckled at that. _"I promise, when the baby's born you can carry all the heavy things if you want. But for now…"_ He'd swept her off her feet and into his arms bridal-style, evoking a yelp of delighted surprise from her, _"…I'll be the one doing the carrying."_

River doesn't realize she's crying until she feels the tears drip off her chin and onto the blue fabric of her jumpsuit. How can she go inside when all that awaits her is an empty bed and some two-hundred-year-old memories? How can she possibly still live in this house, knowing that she'll never again come home to the beaming face of her husband and the jaunty tunes that had always been playing on the radio?

 _Because,_ River tells herself, _Shaun needs someplace to live when you rescue him._ That steadies her nerve a bit. She pushes the door open and steps inside, taking a deep breath as she examines the remnants of her living room. The walls are barren and littered with holes, letting in the dim light of the moon, and she sees that it's not nearly as much of a mess as she imagined it would be. The couch has lost its cushions, the televisions has toppled over and shattered against the floor, and the kitchen chairs are strewn about everywhere, but apart from that it's remarkably intact. She turns down the hall, past the bathroom with its shattered mirror and sink that is barely hanging to the wall by a screw, past the laundry room with the long-broken washer and dryer that are both more rust than metal, past her room with the collapsed bed frame and the drawers that are no longer in the dresser, and—

She stops at the entrance to Shaun's room. Despite the odds, the crib is still in one piece, even if the mobile dangling overhead is missing one of its rocket ships. Carefully, as if the entire room will turn to dust if she puts too much weight into her pace, she steps inside. Her foot brushes against one of his wooden blocks, the _R_ barely more than a shadow of yellow paint at this point. Her break shakes and shudders, and her heart feels like it has plummeted into her stomach. It's too empty. It shouldn't be this empty, there should be Shaun in his crib, laughing and cooing, and Nate humming along to the radio, and the distinctive noise of pots and pans in the kitchen as Codsworth prepares the evening meal and…

River slumps against the nearest wall, sliding to the ground as the sobs burst free and wrack her body. _Everything's gone._ Every time she forgets for a second that the world hasn't ended and that two hundred years haven't gone by in the blink of an eye, it comes back and hits her twice as hard. _I can't do this. I can't._

What would Nate do in her situation, she wonders, had it been her to have taken the bullet? Would his military training have kicked in, or would he have been just as lost and as hopeless as she was? Would he have fared better against the raiders and the Deathclaw? Would he be sitting where she is now, knees drawn up to his chest and bawling over everything that had been lost? She wishes that he were here now, with her, pulling her back to her feet and telling her that everything would be all right.

A whine in the hall catches her attention, and River looks up to see Dogmeat standing in the doorway, tail swishing back and forth as he stares at her with a tilted head. "Hey, boy," she says through her tears, immediately reaching out for him. He trots forward, resting his chin on her shoulders as she wraps her arms around him and threads her fingers through the thick fur at the base of her shoulders. "Sorry, I didn't mean to worry you." Dogmeat huffs and turns to lick at her ear. "He-ey-ey, stop that, that tickles!" She pulls away slightly. "You're a good boy, you know that? Looking after your friends like that."

Even in the apocalypse, the meaning of "good boy" is still universally understood between humans and dogs. Dogmeat lets out a joyous bark and sits next to her, tail happily slamming against the bare linoleum. River scratches at his ear. "You know, we always wanted a dog," she says. "We were stuck on what kind, though. Some dogs just weren't great to have around young kids, too nervous or too energetic. Nate wanted a golden retriever; I don't know if they still exist now, but they were this yellow dogs that were known for being one of the 'classic family dogs,' all friendly and smart. As for me, well…" She pats his shoulder. "I think I would have wanted a dog like you. You seem like you'd be nice around kids. You won't be too rough around Shaun when we find him, right?"

Dogmeat barks.

"Good boy."

A few minutes of silence pass, broken only by Dogmeat's soft panting and River's still-shaky breathing. Eventually, though, the Shepherd starts sniffing at the wound on River's side, where the blood has stained her jumpsuit and clotted into a rather unpleasant-looking scab. "Oh, that? Don't worry, boy, that's not too big a deal. I mean, it still stings like hell, but it'll heal up well enough in a few days." She shifts her sore arm. "And this is just a lot of bruising. It feels a bit like when you push yourself too hard when exercising because you think you can handle it, but you wake up the next morning and you feel like you've been hit by a truck. Or, in this case I guess, a giant killer reptile thing." She frowns. "Still going to have to get used to _that_ bullshit."

Dogmeat has lost interest in what she's saying (if he'd ever been interested in the first place) and is now nosing at the pocket of her Vault suit. "What are you doing?" she asks, reaching down to nudge him away. As she does, her hand brushes against the pocket, feeling the outline of the contents within. Nate's ring, heavy and cold. And…

 _The holotape._ She yanks the little tape out of her pocket. The words _Hi, Honey_ have been scrawled across the label in Nate's familiar blocky handwriting, and River feels a surge of… _something_ between grief and comfort. She fumbles with her Pip-Boy, opening up the holotape player and shoving the tape inside. She needs to hear his voice again. Even if it's just a holotape, she _needs_ to hear it.

She presses play.

" _Whoa, whoa, careful. Haha, no, no, little fingers away from the microphone."_ The voice that comes out of her Pip-Boy's speaker is tinny and faintly muffled by static and the age of the tape, but it's _his_ voice. _"Aaaaand that's my nose, that's my nose you're hitting there. All right, here we go, just say it to the recorder there, okay? Right there, right there, go ahead!"_ There's the familiar sound of an infant giggling, and River's heart practically stops. _"Ha ha, yeah, yay! Hey, there, sweetie. You've just gone out to the store for some more formula, and I wanted to record this for you later. I just wanted to say…_

" _Well, I don't think Shaun and I_ need _to tell you just how incredible you are and how much we love you. But we're going to do it anyway. You're so kind, and caring and tough, tough like a mama bear…"_ Shaun giggles again. _"And funny, yeah! God, you're one of the funniest women I've ever met. I love every part of you, even the grouchy morning part. Don't roll your eyes, we both know you're not a morning person."_

There's a short pause before Nate continues, his voice a little softer. _"It's been an amazing year, you know that? You me, Shaun, Codsworth…"_ He's interrupted by a high-pitched coo of delight. _"Yeah, buddy, Codsworth! With us all here together, it's been incredible, and I just know that things are going to get even better from here."_

River's vision turns into a blurry mess as the tears well up and overflow.

" _I know you're a bit worried about the war and those camps and trust me, I am too. But I'm certain that we'll make it through this together. I'll re-enter the work force, maybe get a job at one of the factories in Lexington. And you'll be able to go back to the gym and get your boxing career back on track! I know maternity leave's been rough on you. But everything we've done, we've done to make sure we have the best life possible for our family. Things are going to be great, sweetie. Okay, Shaun, now we've gotta say goodbye to the recorder! Can you say bye bye?"_ Shaun laughs. _"Okay, well, we'll work on that later. Goodbye, River! We love you!"_

The recording stops.

* * *

 **A/N: :T**

 **Fun facts:**

 **FFFM# 8: This is probably the shortest chapter I've written of anything in a while. "So why did it take so long?" Excellent question, hypothetical speaker! The answer is that winter break threw my productivity schedule out the window (I usually work before school or during lunch hour), so I didn't get a whole lot of writing done.**

 **FFFM #9: Once again, I'm trying to give Nate his own character, more than just a love interest in a metaphorical fridge designed to shuffle the plot along and motivate the protagonist. I want him to matter as him, not as The Dead Spouse. So, I made a few alterations to the tape to try and capture what I wanted him to be like.**

 **FFFM #10: The chapter title was ripped from the name of a main Dragon Age II quest. That, too, involves dead loved ones. Fun times for everyone.**


	5. Everything Stays

**A/N - Almost 20 faves and we haven't even reached Lexington yet, wow. I'm really flattered that y'all like it!**

 **In response to ManiaAdun's question about how far I'll be adhering to canon, I will be sticking to the general line of the main plot pretty closely, but some things will be tweaked to better fit the overall flow, and there will be a few alterations here and there. I'm not gonna go full AU, just adjust the fit a little, mostly to trim a couple of pieces of unnecessary narrative fat and flesh out stuff that was a little weak in canon.**

* * *

 **Chapter Five – Everything Stays**

* * *

"So, River, right? That's what the robot fella was callin' you when he was showin' us around the place last night."

River looks up at Sturges, directing her attention away from the street lamp she is currently working on hauling out of the street. It's more difficult than she'd originally imagined it would be, in large part due to the fact that she's only really got one arm to work with. Well, okay, she technically does have two, but her left arm is even sorer now than it was when she finally fell asleep last night, making moving it an unpleasant task. _Good thing cryogenic stasis prevents muscle atrophy, or I'd be fucked._ "Yeah, that's my name, "she says, wiping a hand across her brow. "River Yu Samson." It only just now occurs to her that she never actually formally introduced herself to the Concord refugees.

"Huh. Nice name." Sturges is examining the foundation of one of the destroyed houses. "Anyway, what I wanted to say is that it's awful kind of you to help us out with cleaning the place up. I know you used to live here and all back before Vault-Tec put you on ice, but still, you didn't have to go through all the trouble."

"It's no trouble. Like you said, I used to live here." River finally gets the street lamp off the road and into one of the lawns. "You think we're going to need this?"

Pulling his working goggles away from his eyes, Sturges turns to run a thorough gaze over the lamp. "Maybe. That bulb don't look like it'd be of much use now, but the pole itself might make for some good support, if we can get it stable. Right now, though, my biggest worry is that we get a good source of food and water. We found some've those wild melons behind one of the empty houses, and your metal buddy's been helpin' us with gettin' some of the seeds planted, but that's all gonna take a while, and it still don't solve the water issue."

River frowns. "What about the water from the stream?" she says, nodding down towards the brook. Sure, it may not be as pretty as it had been before humanity had decided that a good old radiation bath was the best way to solve the world's problems and it's gone terribly stagnant, but boiling it should help with some of the worst of it, right?

"It ain't any good," Sturges replies with a shake of his head. "Try wadin' through it with that Pip-Boy on and see how long it takes before the Geiger starts raisin' a fuss. Now, there might be enough stray plumbin' and filters around these houses around for me to try my hand at puttin' together some sort of purifier, but the problem would be powerin' it. I'd need a generator; not a big one for what we need, but definitely more than what we got."

"Hmm," River folds her arms over her chest, wincing as a sharp protesting ache jolts through her shoulder. "Would Concord have what you need? I mean, I know it's no Boston, but people did use to live there."

"Probably; beyond the little commotion yesterday, I can't imagine it's been a big spot for raiders to hit. No factories, not very big… if there's anything there left that can help us, I say take it. The best thing to find would be something to power the generator itself. That fusion core in the power armor would do the trick nicely. 'Course, it means that we wouldn't be able to use the armor itself until we get our hands on _more_ cores."

"Something tells me we're not going to be getting much use out of that thing in the near future, anyway," River deadpans. "You get started on the purifier, and I'll take care of getting material for the generators once I head down to Concord for the armor." She rolls her shoulder experimentally, and is rewarded with even more pain. "Ow, son of a fuck. Actually, maybe wait a couple days. I think if I try to hike all the way down to Concord and hike back carrying two hundred pounds of junk and a set of power armor, my biceps are going to crawl out of my arm and try and strangle me in my sleep. Man, wouldn't _that_ be a gruesome image. Muscles everywhere, it's be like something out of a horror film." _The Day the Insides Attacked. Would've made for one hell of a marquee, honestly._

Sturges chuckles. "I wouldn't wanna be the one to find you the next morning', that's for sure. All right, I'll work on gathering scrap from the buildings together and seeing if I can make something out of it all. Could use your help liftin' some of the heavy stuff, if you're up for it."

River glances around the neighborhood, at all the houses that have collapsed from the destructive mix of the bomb and time. She can probably name off which house belonged to whom from memory, should she want to. "I'm always up for lifting heavy things," she says, keeping her voice as neutral as she can. "That's what I do."

"And you ain't half bad at it, seems like. C'mon, this house over here's a good spot to start clearing out."

* * *

"You okay?"

"Hm?" River looks up sharply from the fire and the cooking pot full of… _something_ boiling right over it. Across the fire, Preston is looking at her with concern creasing his features, an orange glow cast upon his face by the dim flames. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just… I knew the people that lived here, you know? We didn't always get along, but they were still my neighbors. And now I'm helping to use their houses for scrap parts." She's quiet for a few minutes. "The house that Sturges and I cleared out earlier belonged to the Ables. They were older than me and Nate by quite a good deal; I think they might have had kids that were close to our age, actually. Mr. Able was a great cook." Now that she's sliding down the slippery slope to Misery City again, she can't stop, the words tripping over themselves as they tumble out of her mouth. "And now they're all dead in broken cryo pods and I'm sifting through their houses searching for useful shit like– like some sort of post-nuclear _vulture_ and all I can think of is that the rest of the world is like this and it's been like this for hundreds of years but I can still remember that first bomb so _fucking_ clearly and…" Her voice trails off into an agitated groan and she runs her hand over her face, the heel of her palm skimming the scar on her cheek. "Sorry."

"Don't be," Preston says, giving the sludge in the pot another stir. "I don't blame you for still being a bit on edge. Most Vault Dwellers have difficulties adjusting to the wasteland, and they haven't been asleep for two hundred years. Besides," his voice goes quiet, "I know what it's like to lose your home."

River gazes at him for a few moments before looking around at the rest of Sanctuary. Sturges is bent over one of the toolbenches the next house over, scrawling something down on a piece of paper; blueprints for the purifier, maybe? Mama Murphy is sitting in the chair next to him, hands clasped over her lap, Dogmeat resting loyally at her feet. Marcy and Jun are walking through the street of the cul-de-sac hand in hand and quietly talking to each other, Jun a bit steadier on his feet than he had been the day before. And Codsworth is busy tending to what would, with luck, soon be the Sanctuary's primary food supply. Things look peaceful now, but they certainly hadn't yesterday, and it sounds like that had only been the latest in a long string of problems for these people. "What happened to you all?" she asks.

Preston shifts in his seat, the laser musket resting comfortably across his lap. "A group of mercenaries called the Gunners attacked a settlement called Quincy," he says. "It's a ways east of here. The Gunners aren't exactly the friendliest bunch; they're only one step above raiders if you ask me. Quincy requested help from the Minutemen, and we came to try and protect them. But there weren't enough of us." His gaze drops down to the dimming glow of the fire. "I was the only Minutemen who made it out of there alive. I managed to get a group of settlers out of Quincy and on the road, making about twenty of us all in total. Mama Murphy had had one of her visions, telling us about Sanctuary and how we needed to head west to find it. We thought it was a good sign at first, but we just kept getting hit with disaster after disaster. The worst of it was the ghouls in Lexington. I thought we'd never make it out of that place. Many of us didn't."

River frowns. "Ghouls?" Yet another new-world monster that she didn't know of.

"Oh, right," Preston says, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly. "I keep forgetting you don't know about these things yet. Ghouls are… well, they're irradiated people. Most are just like you and me, even if they look pretty messed up. They live a pretty long time, too. Some of them were even born before the war."

That catches River's attention. "Before the war? Like, they used to live here?" Her heart flutters with hope. Maybe some of the people she used to know became ghouls and are still out there, living out their lives in the wasteland. Maybe she's not as alone as she thought she was.

"Yeah. A lot of them became ghouls after the bombs, though. They get hit by radstorms, toxic wastes, the radiation in the water, and they change over time. Like I said, a lot of them are just people. But the ones I'm talking about are different. The radiation's rotted their brains, making them more like feral animals than anything, and they'll rip you apart, just as soon as look at you."

"Oh. That sounds… oh."

"Yeah. If you're planning on heading down to Lexington, be careful. Sometimes they'll just lie on the ground, you won't be able to tell them apart form a dead body until they reach up and grab you. After Lexington, we thought that Concord would be a good place to catch our breath, stay the night while we recovered. Those raiders proved us wrong. But then you came along and helped us out. Dunno how we're going to repay you for that."

River raises and eyebrow. "Don't set my neighborhood on fire while I'm gone?"

That gets a chuckle out of Preston. "I think we can manage that." He leans forward to examine the stew, the light of the fire catching against the brim of his hat. "I think that's good and done. I'm going to go tell the others that dinner's done." He stands up and heads off, shouting out for Sturges and the Longs as he does.

Now alone with her thoughts for a few seconds, River thinks about what she's just learned. Murderous mercenaries and people turned feral by radiation and who knows what else is standing between her and Shaun. The more she learns about what the world's become, the more impossible everything seems.

 _But then again,_ she thinks, _one would consider it impossible that I survived Vault 111 at all. That I was able to escape death by nuclear apocalypse by a hair's width._ She seemed to be on a bit of a streak with "surviving shit no one should reasonably be expected to survive." God be willing, she'd survive this, too.

Especially when Shaun's safety depending on her being alive to rescue him.

* * *

"You sure you got that?"

"I'm sure," River spits through gritted teeth, back and shoulders straining against the mass of the huge, thin sheet of metal she's hauling out of the rubble. It's not particularly _heavy_ , relatively speaking, but it is huge and partially buried under a bunch of drywall and piping and wood, and even with her arm and side having healed up well it's still difficult. "I actually think this used to be a garage door."

"Well, soon as you get it out of there, it's gonna be part of the wall," Sturges says, hammering another nail into one of the pieces of scrap he'd pinned to the wall of the house he's currently in the process patching up. "That stream out there is a breedin' ground for things like bloatflies and bloodbugs, and the last thing we need 'round here is to wake up with giant bugs buzzin' over us while we're tryin' to get some shut-eye."

River pauses. "All right, I think I know what a bloatfly is, but what's a bloodbug?" She has a sneaking suspicion, on that she really hopes is wrong.

Sturges pauses in his works. "Well, there's these nasty lookin' bugs, all thing with long legs and wings, 'bout the size of Dogmeat over there." He gestures with his hand, trying to indicate the wingspan of the creature in question. "And if they get up close to you they'll stab you and try and drink your blood. They're a pain in the neck for trader caravans that use brahmin. Damn things are attracted to big animals like that."

 _God damn it._ "You have got to be _fucking_ kidding me," River exclaims, dropping the metal sheet to the ground. "Fuck, even the apocalypse couldn't take out mosquitos? Worse yet, it just made them bigger?! Because that's what the world needed: _giant fucking mosquitos._ "

"Mo-what-now? That what you used to call them way back when?"

"Yeah. They used to be a lot smaller, though; a big one could fit on your thumbnail. They could carry around some pretty nasty diseases, but mostly they just bit you and the bites itches a lot for a few days. You're telling me they're the size of dogs now?"

"Well, usually. Sometimes they're bigger."

River misses being able to take a trip down to the gym and take out all her frustrations on some poor punching bag, because right now she is feeling _pretty fucking annoyed_ at the world. "You know, we used to have feature films about what might happen in the event that the stalemate broke and the world powers started lobbing their nuclear arsenal at each other," she remarks, grabbing the metal sheet against and yanking it free of the rubble. "I watched a few of them. They were terrible, but they were a funny kind of terrible. There were lots of radiation mutants in these films. Mutant men, giant two-headed swamp creatures… but never giant mosquitos. You know why, Sturges?" She picks the sheet up and leans it against the house, covering the biggest hole in the wall. "Because even Hollywood knew that there are some things just _too fucked up_ for this world."

Sturges grins at her rambling. "It ain't like Bloodbugs are the worst things in the wasteland," he said, grabbing a few nails from his toolbox. "They're pretty easy to deal with if you can hit 'em."

" _If?!_ "

"Well, they're pretty quick. But once you do get 'em, they're not a problem." He gets back to work, shifting the metal sheet into position and beginning to hammer it into place. After a few moments, he changes the subject. "Been takin' inventory on all the stuff we've managed to salvage from the houses since we got here. I reckon that it'll take a while to but it all together, but we've got most of what we need to get a purifier up and runnin'. Concord should have the rest."

"That's great news." River watches him work, seeing the calculations running in his head as he does his repairs. "Where'd you learn how to make generators and water purifiers from?" She can't imagine that college is still a thing; did C.I.T. even survive the bombing?

"Well, I reckon I never 'learned' it from any one place," Sturges replies, wiping the sweat off his brow. "I've always had a knack for tinkerin', really. And if you take somethin' apart enough times, you start to get a feel for how to put it back together again. Most've it came outta necessity; we needed generators in Quincy to keep the spotlights on. Weren't for them, we'd have been hit even harder when the Gunners came knockin'."

"How long did you live in Quincy?"

"Moved there a good few years back. Before that I lived on a farm down south of Boston, not too far from the Glowing Sea. Didn't like it too much; something about livin' so close to that place just didn't sit right with me."

Glowing Sea? Is that what they called the Atlantic, now? "You mean the ocean?"

"Nah, ocean's not too bad, so long as you don't mind the mirelurks. I'm talking about where the bomb dropped, back in your day. The radiation there is worse than anywhere else – I'm talking 'dead-in-minutes' bad – and the critters are a lot bigger and nastier. Imagine the Deathclaw you killed, only a lot meaner."

Oh. "I… I don't think I want to imagine that," River says with a concerned frown. She makes a note to herself to find out where the Glowing Sea is and avoid it at all costs. "In fact, can we just pretend that you never said that, and that the thing I blew up back in Concord was the biggest and meanest Deathclaw to ever traverse the East Coast? For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else."

Sturges chuckles. "I don't blame you. Truth be told, though, the only reason we know about those critters is because they like to wander out from the outskirts. Can't even begin to imagine how bad things are in the middle of that mess. I can say this, though, anyone tryin' to pass through there without power armor and more Rad-Away than you can shake a stick at ain't gonna have a pleasant time."

" _That's really not helping, Sturges."_

"Heh. Sorry." Sturges hammers the final nail into the wall and steps back to admire his handiwork. "Well, it ain't no Diamond City carpentry, but I reckon it'll do for now."

River pushes herself away from the wall and turns around to look at it. It's still noticeable beaten and patchwork, but the repairs done have given it a bit of… something. She can't describe it, but looking at it now, it feels less abandoned. She hopes that the rest of the neighborhood will start to feel like home again once the houses have been picked up. "It looks like it will keep out the giant irradiated insects, at least," she says. "Good work." She runs a hand through her dark brown hair and grimaces. She hadn't bothered to tie it back into its usual bun that morning, and now that it's hanging loose in messy waves around her shoulders she is painfully aware of the dirt and the grime and the knots. "Are you _sure_ the streams too bad to bathe in?"

"Well, if you're _really_ itchin' for rad-sickness…"

"All right, all right, I get it."

* * *

"Miss River, are you absolutely sure that this is a good idea? Your wounds have only just healed, and I worry that if you push yourself too hard—"

"Sanctuary Hills _needs_ the purifier, Codsworth," River says, tying her hair back. "The water they had with them when they got here is only going to last us so long, and the weather sure hasn't been helping." She doesn't know how much of the climate shift is due to radiation and how much is due to it simply having been two hundred years, but the air over Massachusetts is significantly drier than it used to be, even with the Atlantic Ocean practically on their doorstep. "'Sides, I can't just sit here on my ass and do _nothing_ , not with everything the way it is."

"I know, but… I'm still dreadfully worried. After what happened to Master Nathan—"

" _Codsworth._ " River is a bit harsher than she means to be, her chest tightening painfully at the mention of Nate. She lets out a sigh and turns around to face the Mr. Handy, whose gaze is turned towards the floor in shame. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. Look, I'll be fine, all right? It's just a few trips back and forth from Concord over the course of the day. Nothing I haven't done before the world ended."

"If you're certain. But, ma'am, if you'll permit me…" Codsworth hesitates, bobbing up and down in the air slightly. "I realize that I'm no Mister Gutsy, but I'm still equipped with a few defensive tools and some basic combat programming. For protecting the homestead and all that. I'd be honored if you let me accompany you, and least down to Concord and back. I could even help identify bits and bobs that might be useful while we're down there."

River thinks it over. She'd been planning on taking Dogmeat with her to keep her company while she wanders through the now-empty streets of the old city, and she still intends to, if only for the whole "enhanced dog senses" thing. But Codsworth's her friend, probably her only real friend right now, and she realizes that she really does want him nearby, at least for this. "Yeah, of course," she says. "I'd love it if you came along."

"Splendid!" Codsworth exclaims. "I shall go prepare some food for the trip. Wouldn't want to see you go hungry while lugging about that power armor, would we? I think we still have some Cram in the pantry somewhere…"

As he bobs off towards the direction of the kitchen, River returns her attention to the supplies she'd scattered across her mattress. She's hesitant about bringing the laser musket; it was a powerful weapon, yes, but she has no idea where to find more ammo for it, and her stomach still turns at the memory of the raider's cut-off scream as he turned to ash. She eventually decides against it, choosing to bring only the brass knuckles and the 10mm pistol. Not that she's planning on using either of them (at least, she really hopes she doesn't have to use them), but if the fight a few days ago taught her anything, it's that you can't go wandering through the wasteland unarmed.

She's not sure which is more preferable; the looming threat of nuclear war, hovering over the world like a suffocating cloud of uncertainty, or the immediate, _certain_ threats that have cropped up after the bombs have dropped. It could be worse, though. She imagines being the only human left alive, just her stumbling lost and confused in a world burned away by war, and shudders. Yeah, she'll take the raiders thrice over.

Clipping the 10mm to the thin leather belt she's tied over her jumpsuit and tucking the brass knuckles into her pocket, she heads out into the living room where Codsworth is waiting with a small rucksack dangling from one of his hands. "Here you go, ma'am!" he says, handing it over to her. "There's some food in there for when you get hungry, and plenty of room for whatever useful little knickknacks we happen to find while we're down there."

"You're an angel, Codsworth," River responds with a grin as she slings the rucksack over her shoulder. "I don't say it nearly as often as I should, but you really are the absolute best."

If Codsworth had a circulatory system, he'd surely be blushing right now. "You flatter me, ma'am."

"Only with the truth," River says. "Now, just need to find Dogmeat and we'll be good to go." She purses her lips together and lets out a long, high-pitched whistle, and it only takes a few moments for the sound of dull claws clicking against linoleum to answer as the German Shepherd comes dutifully trotting in through the empty doorway where the side door used to be. "Hey, boy," River coos, leaning down and scratching him behind his ears. "Me and Codsworth are gonna go down to Concord to move the power armor and find the stuff Sturges needs to build the purifier. You wanna come with?"

Dogmeat barks eagerly, wagging his tail.

"Oh, good boy! Maybe we'll find you a toy or a dog bone while we're down there!" She's pretty sure Concord had a pet store near the museum.

Maybe.

If it's still intact.

* * *

Concord is a lot quieter, now that no one's shooting each other, and as River wanders through the empty streets, watching remnants of flyers and newspapers flutter across the broken streets in the faint breeze, the only thing that keeps her grounded is Dogmeat's panting and the humming and whirring of Codsworth's propulsor.

She didn't spend a whole lot of time in Concord; before they'd moved into Sanctuary, she and Nate had lived in an apartment in Boston, not too far from the boxing gym. There just hadn't really been any real reason to visit, except for that one time where Tatiana and her girlfriend had invited River and Nate over for dinner and drinks. After they'd moved, they'd just been too busy making sure everything would be ready for when the baby was born. So she doesn't feel the same hollow feeling biting at her insides the way she did when she'd first stepped into the ruins of Sanctuary Hills. But there's still that feeling that this is _wrong_ , that there should be _people_ here, walking and talking and driving and _living._

River steps into the main street in front of the Museum of Freedom, wrinkling her nose at the sight. The Raider bodies have been strewn about on the ground unattended for a few days, and the beginning stages of rot is proving it. Bits and pieces of Deathclaw are scattered here and there, ending with the creature's still mostly-intact lower half in the middle of the street. "My word," Codsworth mutters. "You certainly made a mess of the place, didn't you, ma'am?"

"Yeah," River says, gingerly stepping over one of the corpses. Laser burns cover his face; one of Preston's kills, then, one of the few that didn't just turn to ash. "I… I know this seems really gruesome, but I'm going to try and check their… bodies for anything useful. I've only got so much ammo, and maybe some of that armor will help." She feels naked in just her jumpsuit, a bright blue target for anything in the wasteland to come and chew on. She approaches one of the more intact bodies, fighting back the bile rising in her throat as the stench of decay hits her like a baseball bat to the olfactory senses. "After that I want to go through some of these buildings and then hit the museum for the power armor stuff that Sturges needs for the generator. Can you and Dogmeat go through the hardware store over there, see if there's anything that could be used?"

"Very well, ma'am. Please do be careful; it wouldn't do us any good if you caught some awful disease from all this mess, would it?" Codsworth turned and floated off in the direction of the corner store, Dogmeat trotted behind with his tail wagging. As they left, River got to work, holding her breath and kneeling next to the body. A 10mm not unlike her own was still clamped in a hand that has gone stiff with rigor mortis, and after a few seconds of prying the fingers apart and struggling with her own revulsion at the task, she manages to grab the pistol and eject the magazine. _Remember, like Nate showed you_. She pockets the ammo and scans the raider's body for anything more useful.

Her gaze falls upon the armor, ragged and makeshift and looking very much like it had been made from a car bumper and a road sign. Still, it was something. She fumbles with the straps, eventually managing to pull the armor off the raider's chest and shoulder and strapping it onto her own body. The fit is a little off; the raider was a tall, thin man, while River is very much none of those things. The chest piece is too long and the straps strain against the bulk of her shoulder and back muscles, and the shoulder piece digs tightly against her biceps. Still, better than nothing.

Maybe she can get someone to help her alter it when she gets back to Concord.

"Ma'am!" Codsworth's voice catches her attention. "I think I found something you might be interested in!"

River gets to her feet, stumbling away from the corpses and towards the little hardware store. There's no glass panes in what was once the windows, so she just leaps over a sill to get inside, almost slipping on a weatherworn page of newspaper as she lands. Inside, Dogmeat is waiting for her at the foot of a flight of stairs, and as soon as he sees her he lets out a cheerful " _rrruf!_ " and leads her up to the second floor where Codsworth is waiting. The Mr. Handy is hovering over a dirty mattress and a small medical cooler, the kind that doctors used to use to store medicine and blood packs in. Nothing's been touched in months; whoever had left this hear isn't coming back. "I do believe there might be something in here that might be useful," Codsworth said, gesturing to the cooler. "Unfortunately, the latch requires a bit more dexterity than I can manage."

"You think that there might still be something in it?" River says, kneeling down by the cooler. It _looks_ to be intact, but who knows how long it's been here, or what the previous owner had used it for. For all she knows, it might have nothing more than a few rotten apples in it.

Do apples even still exist in the apocalypse?

She flips open the latch and peers inside, praying to whoever or whatever is listening that it's something that she or the folks back at Sanctuary could use. For once, fortune turns out in her favor; several syringes that she recognizes as stimpacks lay within, as well as a couple handfuls worth of caps. "Lucky us," she sighs with a grin, closing the cooler and tossing it into the backpack. "Good find, Codsworth."

"Always happy to help, ma'am!" Codsworth beams. "Shall we search the rest of the store? It's a bit barren downstairs, but I think I saw some duct tape behind a shelf."

If there was anything she learned while living in the old apartment in Boston, it was that duct tape is the number one cure for all home improvement ills. "Couldn't hurt," River says. "It's a hardware store, there's gotta be something here that we can bring back to Sturges."

Not only do they find the duct tape that Codsworth mentioned, but they also find a small, half-full can of Mr. Handy oil tucked underneath the staircase. A few minutes later, they're all back on the roof underneath the hazy light of the sun, with River fussing over Codsworth's limb joints. "How did you go two hundred years with creaky joints?" she mutters, placing the oil can down beside her. "General Atomics sure as hell didn't fuck around when they built you, did they?"

"That they certainly did not, ma'am!" Codsworth practically glows with pride. "Shall we go through the rest of the town?"

"In a minute," River says, sliding her pack off her shoulder and kneels down on the ground. "First, I need to eat something before my stomach reaches through my esophagus and strangles me." As if on cue, her belly gives of a sharp, painful growl. She sifts through the sack until her hand closes around a familiar box-shaped can. _Oh, Codsworth, if you had a cheek I'd kiss it._ "Besides," she adds as she pulls out the can of cram, "Concord's quiet now. Let's just let it be quiet for a bit."

"Very well, ma'am," Codsworth says, settling beside her. Dogmeat rests against River's other side, his chin propped against her knee as she sits cross-legged near the edge of the roof and pries open the cram, digging into the processed meat product with impolite fervor. For a few minutes, they are silent, the only noise being the wind puffing against them as it winds its way through Concord, the chill breeze ruffling River's dark hair and reddening the pale skin of her cheeks slightly. Then Codsworth speaks, his voice solemn. "It's a sorry sight, isn't it?"

"Hm?"

"Everything. Sanctuary, Concord… if you had told me two hundred years ago that this was what the world would come to, I would have considered you mad. But here we are, aren't we?" Codsworth's usual chipper demeanor had been replaced with quiet contemplation as his three robotic eyes looked out over the desolate streets.

River hadn't expected 2287 to be _anything_ to her; had things turned out the way they were supposed to, she'd have been dead of old age by now, her and Nate's graves side by side with each other. But she's still alive, and Nate's grave is a malfunctioning cryogenic pod, deep within the tunnels of Vault 111. "It's not the world I would have wanted to raise Shaun in," she admits, swallowing the Cram she had been chewing. "But it's the world I'm going to raise him in, even if I have to punch a dozen Deathclaws in the face to do it."

"Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that, shall we?" Codsworth replies, a glint of amusement in his voice. "You know, young master Shaun is fortunate to have a mother such as you."

River scoffs. _A useless idiot who couldn't do anything but watch as her own son was pulled out of his dead father's arms and whisked away to God only knows where for God only knows what reason? Yeah, real Mom of the Year, right here._ She doesn't say that out loud, though. Instead she says, "Thanks, buddy. Though I think he'll be most excited to see you again. You know he adores you."

"Oh! Well, I am certainly fond of the young lad, myself. Though I admit, if he's anything like you, he'll be quite the troublemaker when he reached those Terrible Twos!"

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Despite her words, River can't help but chuckle a little at his light-hearted, the side of her mouth curving upwards into a small grin. "What, so I blow up one giant lizard and then suddenly that makes me a 'troublemaker?'"

"Well, no, but I _do_ recall a few interesting stories your mother told when she came over to visit that one time…"

"Those were exaggerated! All moms exaggerate! It's what we do!" River is full-on laughing now, wrapping her arms around her waist to steady herself as tremors of mirth wrack her body. It's not nearly as funny as she's making it out to be, but laughter is better than breaking down crying at yet another reminder of everything the bombs and Vault-Tec and the scarred man took from her. After she calms down, she wipes the tears from her eyes. "Come on. Let's go get that power armor."

* * *

Dragging power armor several miles is not nearly as fun as it looks, especially when one already has a pack stuffed to the brim with scrap slung haphazardly over their shoulders. River has managed to make it a bit easier by prying the armor apart and laying it all on a large tarp she, Codsworth, and Dogmeat had found in the big workhouse before dragging the tarp itself, but it is still an arduous task, not helped by the fact that she's the only one who actually has both the motor skills and the strength necessary to pull it all. It'll likely be nightfall by the time they reach home.

The three of them have reached the outer borders of concord when they hear the shouting.

" _Guys, please, you don't have to do this. You know me!"_

" _No! We need to find out what it relayed to its masters."_

"What the hell is going on down there?" River asks, letting go of the tarp and moving forward to investigate. She draws her pistol and prays she doesn't need to use it.

Up ahead, gathered around a small makeshift campfire, are three people, two of whom pointing a gun at the third. "I didn't relay anything! I escaped the Institute, I told you that!" the third person, a scrawny man with an oversized patchwork coat and a dark beard, cries out, his hands up in the air in a clear sign of surrender. "Fred, Angie, please, we're _friends…_ "

"Quiet, you," the balding man with his gun out, says. "I can't believe this, we… we _trusted_ you. Thought you were a _person_."

"I _am_ a person, please, just listen to me!"

"Bullshit!" the woman with a pale and dirt-smeared complexion and a thick leather vest snaps, brandishing her pistol at the bearded man.

River doesn't know what it is that spurs her to move forward, leaving a concerned Codsworth and a very distraught Dogmeat behind as she approaches the scene. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's just calm down here!" she shouts. "No need to go shooting anyone over… whatever the fuck it is we're threatening to shoot people over!"

The balding man turns to face her. He runs a critical gaze over her, noting the bright blue of her Vault suit and the ill fit of her scavenged armor. "Beat it, vaultie," he says brusquely. "This doesn't concern you."

"Sorry, but I'm generally not the sort to stand aside and let an innocent person get fucking shot!" River retorts. _At least, not when I can do something about it._ Maybe that's why she's so eager to help; maybe this is her way to atone in some small part for being so helpless to prevent Nate's death. "What the hell is even with that, anyway? Why does the end of the world mean 'hey, let's all go gun-crazy and shoot each other' like we're all a bunch of fucking animals? We're people, damn it!"

"That _thing_ ," the bald man spits, "ain't a person, lady. It's a synth. We've been traveling with it for weeks and it's been lying to us the whole time. But then today he finally let slip that he's an Institute errand boy! This whole fucking time…"

"I didn't let anything slip! I told you because I thought I could trust you!" the bearded man says. "Because I thought you were my friends!"

The bald man scoffs. "I'd never be friends with a damn synth," he says.

River can see the heartbreak flit across the bearded man's face. "You were already friends with a synth," he pleads, his voice breaking a little. "Now, please, j-just… just let me _go_."

"You think we're stupid? You're just gonna run off and get your Institute buddies to come put us down. That ain't happening, pal."

"I _told_ you, Fred, I'm not with the Institute. I ran away! I'd never do anything to hurt either of you, you know that! I just need to get to Bunker Hill. Then I swear, I won't ever bother you again!"

River butts in again. "Okay, okay, wait," she says sharply, holding up a hand to cut off the people in front of her before they can speak. "What the hell is the Institute and what the _fuck_ is a synth?"

The leather-clad woman looks taken aback at this. "You ain't ever heard of the Institute?" she says, gaping at River like she's some sort of statistical impossibility. Which she sort of _is_ , really, but she's not about to let the pissed-off people with the guns know that.

"Angie, are you stupid? Look at the suit," the balding man (who River has surmised at this point to be named Fred) hisses. "She's a vaultie. Course they don't know what the Institute is." He turns back to River. "The Institute takes people in the night, see, and replaces them with these… robot copies or something, called synths. They look exactly like who they're replacing, and got all their memories and personality. Only thing is, they're spies for the Institute. They get all sorts of information and they send it back to wherever it is they're reporting to."

River felt her blood run cold. Replacing people with synthetic doppelgangers? She turns to the bearded man. "Is this true?"

The man hesitates. "Y-yes," he admits. "But I'm not a part of that life anymore. I wasn't even made to be a replacement or a spy, I was just meant for labor work! The Railroad helped me get out, I just want to live a normal life, so _please,_ Fred, Angie, just let me go!" There are tears in his eyes at this point.

"You really think we're going to believe anything you say at this point, you mechanical bastard?" Fred snarls. He raises his gun again, but River stops him, placing a hand firmly on the barrel. He whips around to glare at her, but she holds firm underneath his gaze.

"Listen. Fred, right? And you over there, you're Angie?" The woman hesitates at being addressed, then nods. " _Think about it_. If the Institute… whatever the fuck that is… sent him out here to spy on you, why would he tell you that he's a synth? Wouldn't it have been better for his mission if he'd just pretended to be a regular flesh-and-blood human this whole time?"

"W-well, he… what if…" Fred faltered, exchanging a glance with Angie. "What if he was just trying to get on our good side? You know, making us think he was some sort of good synth so we'd trust him, think he had nothing else to hide."

"Yeah, because telling you his true nature is turning out really peachy for him right now, isn't it?" River says. "Face it, you're just grasping at straws here because you're scared. You're right, I'm just some dumbass who stumbled out of a Vault a few days ago. So I don't know anything about the Institute. But from where I'm standing, I'm not seeing two people pointing their guns at some evil robot spy. I'm just seeing three really scared people who maybe need to calm down and let the other person walk away with their head still attached to their body." Fred still hesitated. "Think about it, Fred," River presses, practically pleading herself. "Really think about it. If he wanted you hurt or dead, wouldn't he have done so before now."

"I…"

"She's got a point, Fred," Angie points out. "He's had all the chances in the world to drag us to the Institute… maybe we should just let him go."

After a few agonizing seconds, Fred lowers his gun. "All right," he says, hanging his head. "But if I ever see you again, Jules, I'm putting one right between your eyes."

"O-oh god," the bearded man stammers in relief. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Just get the hell out of here."

"We're going." River grabs a hold of the bearded man's – Jules's – arm. "You don't have to worry about us."

When she gently tugs Jules away, he happily follows, and they both head back to where Codsworth and Dogmeat are waiting. "Ma'am, that was incredibly brash of you!" Codsworth scolds. " _Gallant_ , certainly, but you could have been killed!" Dogmeat whines in agreement, leaning against River's legs and nosing concernedly at her feet.

"I know," River says," but I wasn't just going to stand by and let them shoot an innocent man if there was something I could do about it." She turned to Jules. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Y-yeah. At least, I'm going to be." He looks shaken, not that she can blame him; being turned upon by people you trusted will do that to you. "Thank you so much for getting me out of that. I thought for sure they were going to… after all we…" He swallows, and when he speaks again his voice is thick with emotion. "Thanks."

"No problem. Listen, my friends and I are setting up a place to live not too far from here, just north of the Red Rocket. I'm sure they won't mind if you stay there with us for a couple days while you catch your bearings." River isn't about to _let_ them mind.

Jules shakes his head. "That's… that's very kind of you, but I don't want to cause any more trouble. I just need to get to Bunker Hill, I'll be safe there."

"All right," River says. She frowns slightly at the odd look the man is giving her. "Is something wrong?"

"Y-yeah, I just… I'm sorry, something about your face just looks familiar. It's nothing. I really need to get going; I don't want to be here if Fred and Angie change their minds about letting me live."

"Probably for the best. If I see you again, I'll be sure to say hi."

"Yeah." Jules turns and leaves, breaking into a run as soon as he reaches the tree line. River watches him leave with an aching feeling of discontent boiling in her stomach. "Christ, Codsworth," she mutters. "What the fuck happened in the past two hundred years?"

"Apparently more than I thought," Codsworth replies. He places one of his limbs – the one that _won't_ immediately slice or burn River upon contact – on her shoulder. "Come on. We don't want to keep Misters Garvey and Sturges waiting, do we?"

River sighs and bends down, grabbing the tarp and starting the long trek home once more. "No," she says, "I don't suppose we do."

* * *

 **A/N - Some fun facts, if you're interested!**

 **FFFM #11: This was originally going to be a bit longer and have more scenes involving River exploring Concord, but I cut back on it for time and wordcount's sake (We're already at almost 8K words without author's notes as it is). Plus, I was struggling with writing Codsworth and wanted to do more with characters I know more about and understand more as characters (I spent very little time with Codsworth in-game I'M SORRY LITTLE BUDDY BUT YOU'RE A POOR MEATSHIELD). One of whom will be showing up in about... *checks watch* two chapters.**

 **FFFM #12: The title for this chapter comes from the Adventure Time song of the same name. I do think about the song in relation to Sanctuary Hills a lot, and I think in many ways they do work well together. Everything stays, right where you left it... everything stays, but it still changes... ever so slightly, daily and nightly, in little ways... Oh, I made myself sad.**

 **FFFM #13: GW2 is amazing, man. Such a fun little MMO. That's why this update took its sweet time. Been bust with that. (Magister Sieran please love me.)**


	6. Bitten Off More

**A/N - So school was kicking my ass and that's why I haven't updated in like four months. Buuuuuuut I've graduated now, so updates can start again! Yayyy! (Also holy moly 25 faves for 6 chapters that is many.)**

* * *

 **Chapter Six – Bitten Off More**

* * *

It's mid-afternoon the next day when Preston first asks her about Tenpines Bluff.

The two of them are just finishing up looking through a root cellar turned makeshift fallout cellar that Jun had stumbled across inside one of the house. Unfortunately, there had been a stunning lack of root vegetables, but they had managed to find some canned BlamCo products that had, true to advertising, refused to expire in the wake of nuclear fallout, as well as some stagnant but still radiation-free water. It would pull the settlers through for another few days, at least.

River has clambered out of the cellar and is holding the door open for Preston when he first speaks up. "So I heard you were heading for Diamond City in the morning."

"Yeah," River says. "I need to find Shaun. He's still out there somewhere, and if he gets hurt by whoever took him… or anything out there, really, it's a big wasteland with a lot of really nasty new critters out there… I just… I don't know if I could ever forgive myself, you know?"

"I understand. I hope you can find him. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know, okay? After all you've done for us, it's the least I could do."

"I… I appreciate it, Preston, thanks." River can't help but smile at him as he hauls himself out of the root cellar and gets to his feet, brushing the dust off of his colonial coats. "You know, I'm really glad that you're one of the first people I ran into out here. Dunno how I would've felt if my reintroduction to humanity after two hundred years as a Vault-Tec icicle would have gone if I'd ended up running into a bunch of assholes."

Preston chuckles a bit at that, grinning down at her. "Yeah, I'm real glad you're here, too. Concord could've gone a hell of a lot worse without you there." He pauses for a minute, shifting his weight from one foot to another. "Listen," he says finally. "I know you've got your own problems, but there's a favor I've been meaning to ask of you."

River blinks. "Mm?"

"The thing is," Preston begins, "I've had word from a settlement east of here, asking for help. A little farming settlement known as Tenpines Bluff. They're still hoping there are Minutemen out there somewhere. But as far as I know, I'm the only one left, and as much as I want to I can't protect everyone in the Commonwealth by myself. The only chance there is to start rebuilding the Minutemen is to show people that they can count on us to be there when they need us."

"'Protect the people at a minute's notice,'" River recites, remember what he had said to her that day in the Museum of Freedom. She can understand how that might be difficult, given his current situation. The Boston coastal region is pretty big for one person, even if it isn't as densely populated as it had once been.

"Exactly." Preston nods. "These people out in Tenpines really need our help, but I've got my hands full looking after Sanctuary as it is. Since you've already got plans to head out, I was hoping that you go and check up on them, see if there's anything we can do to help."

It's the use of "we" that catches River's attention above else, and the implications it carries. "Preston, are you… a-are you asking me to join the Minutemen?" she stammers.

"Yeah," Preston replies, "guess I am, aren't I?"

"Wh– bu– Preston, did you miss the part where I'm a fucking _boxer_ from two hundred years ago and I crawled out of the ice box only a week ago?! I don't know what people _need_ in the Wasteland, I'm honestly a little bit surprised I managed to make it this fucking far! I'm the same person whose response to being hunted by a raider was to hide behind a display case and hope he went away!"

"You're also the same person who put on a suit of Power Armor and fought a Deathclaw to save a bunch of strangers," Preston pointed out. "And Codsworth told me about that man you helped yesterday. That's the important part, not how well you could shoot a gun in a firefight. The Minutemen could use someone like you."

River opens her mouth and closes it again, flattered and flabbergasted and feeling all sorts of other feelings that she couldn't quite sort through. She thinks about Shaun, about Nate had spent his last moments struggling to keep their son safe and here she was, basically doing anything but. She thinks about the promise she made, about the ring still weighing heavy in her pocket as a cold reminder of everything she had lost.

And then she thinks about Sanctuary, and this Tenpines Bluff place to the east. She thinks about how the people there are so desperate that they're reaching out to a collapsed militia, shouting their pleas into the wasteland in the hopes that someone, _anyone_ , would hear them. She thinks about how, even with the miraculous discovery of the shelter and the treasures within, Sanctuary only has enough food to last a few days, at best. She thinks about how Preston said that Tenpines is a _farming_ settlement, and how the two groups might be able to help each other out.

She thinks about the sort of person she'd be if she abandoned innocent people to their fate so she could go chasing after a lead given to her by a madwoman.

"Yeah," she says. "I'll help. How far away is Tenpines?"

Preston's face lights up like it's his birthday and he's been given the world. _(Are birthdays still a thing? Ask Sturges later.)_ "That–That's great!" he exclaims. "Tenpines Bluff isn't too far to the east, only about a day's walk. They said that they were having trouble with some raiders, but they didn't mention specifics; you'll have to ask them there. Make sure they know that they can trust the Minutemen again."

River wonders about that "again," wonders what happened that caused people to lose faith in the Minutemen in the first place. She doesn't ask, though. Instead, she says, "Don't worry. I'll do what I can to help."

She still wonders just how much she can do.

* * *

River leaves the next morning, a pack half-full of basic supplies slung over her back and Dogmeat trotting along at her heels. In the back of her mind, she thanks whatever is listening that her parents had always dragged her along on those camping trips when she was younger. She might have been surly about it at the time, but now her hiking experience is proving invaluable as she navigates the rocky terrain that was once referred to as "eastern Massachusetts."

Not that it can be called that anymore, after everything that's happened. As she looks around at the withered skeletons of long-dead trees, the hardened and irradiated soil that crushes beneath the heel of her jumpsuit's boot, and the sky that has forever lost some of its vividness, she finds herself at a bit of a loss for what she _can_ call it. The way she's seen it, there isn't any sort of cohesive governmental system left in place, either on the state or federal level. Maybe there's some sort of local government at this Diamond City place, some mayor or city council who can give her the help she needs, but right now, it just seems that one of America's biggest historical centers has become a series of stragglers and settlements. There's no Massachusetts anymore. There's just the wasteland.

The Commonwealth wasteland. That's what the others back at Sanctuary called it. She supposes that it's a good enough name.

She continues the trek. Preston wasn't kidding when he said it was a day's walk away; by the time she finally reaches Tenpines Bluff (or, at least, what her Pip-Boy tells her is Tenpines Bluff), the sky has almost gone completely dark. Her first thought is to wait until the next morning and then come back when the residents are more likely to be awake, but then she sees the unmistakable orange flickering of a cooking fire and a pair of figures crowded around it. She draws closer. "Hello?" she calls. "I'm here to he—"

And that's as far as she gets before she finds the business end of a pipe pistol shoved right in her face. "Who are you?" the settler pointing a gun at her demands. "What do you want? We don't need any more trouble around here."

River immediately raises her hands in surrender. "I'm not here to cause trouble," she says quickly. "In fact, the Minutemen sent me here to make sure you all have a little _less_ trouble in your lives."

The settler hesitates, gun wavering as she exchanges a glance with her companion. "Minutemen?" she said. "I didn't really think they still existed. I just thought…" She runs a critical gaze over River's attire, the bright blue fabric still distinct even at night. "What, the Minutemen got vaulties in their ranks, now?"

River's sarcastic streak rears its head again. "Oh, yeah," she says. "It's all part of our new outreach program. Trying to increase opportunity for us vault dwellers to get a footing in the field, you know?"

The settlers look at her like she had rolled her eyes back and started speaking in eldritch tongues.

 _Tough crowd._ It seems like "diversity in the workforce" is a bit of a dated topic in the apocalypse. "Look," River says, "my personal situation is a bit complicated and, well, personal, but that doesn't matter. Preston Garvey told me that the people at Tenpines Bluff needed help, and here I am. This _is_ Tenpines Bluff, right? I didn't get turned around and somehow end up in Vermont, did I? Because the way you're pointing that gun at me – and if you could stop doing that I would be incredibly grateful – tells me you weren't expecting anyone to drop by."

"N-no, this is…" The settler sighs and lowers her gun. "Sorry about that. When we sent work with that trader that passed through, we never expected anything to come of it. We certainly didn't expect a Minuteman to show up and offer us a hand, not after Quincy. Bad business, that." She wipes a hand over her brow. "I'm Rita. And the man over there with the furry radroach on his lip is Marcus." The mustache-bearing man in question raises his hand and gives a wave of acknowledgement. "So, you meant it when you said you were here to help?"

"No," River jokes, "I came all this way and told you the Minutemen sent me just to fuck with you. April Fools!" She waves her hands in mock celebration. "In October, I guess. Or… actually, is it November already?"

"A vaultie _and_ a smartass. Good to know we're only getting the best the Commonwealth has to offer." Rita shakes her head.

"If it makes you feel better, I turned a Deathclaw into sandwich meat a couple weeks back," River supplies, hopefully helpfully.

Rita is clearly taken aback "That, uh… that kinda does, actually. I guess if you can take on a Deathclaw and come out of it without losing every limb you love, you can take on our problem. See, there's this raider gang that's been giving us trouble for weeks. Stealing food and supplies, threatening to kill us all if we don't pony up. We know where they're coming from, but it's just me and Marcus out here. We can't go up against a gang like that."

River gnaws at her lips. That is a problem. The idea of going into a raider camp with intent to slaughter is not one that appeals to her, but then again, isn't that exactly what the raiders are doing? "Where are they?" she asks.

Rita jabs a thumb southwards. "Down in Lexington," she says. "At the old Corvega Assembly plant. It's a big place, and there are a least a couple dozen of them. You might have trouble taking them all on by yourself if all you're going in with is a pipe shooter and a vaultsuit. You _sure_ you're up for this?"

"Oh, don't worry." River gently nudges Dogmeat with her shin, and he gives a dutiful wag of his tail. "I've got the best help a woman could ask for." She _is_ worried, though. Two dozen armed and merciless raiders against a ragged dog and a woman out of time whose first time killing was last week? Those aren't pretty odds.

"Hm." Rita takes a moment to run a skeptical gaze over River's furry companion. "He definitely looks, tough. Don't suppose it's my place to tell the Minutemen how to go around saving my ass, anyway, vaultie or no."

"Right, sure." River neglects to mention how Rita all but certainly has a more nuanced understanding of the world around them. Her presence provides a comfort; she can see it in the way Marcus's shoulders have lost their tension and in how the deep creases at the corners of Rita's eyes have softened somewhat. "Well, in that case, I'd better get a move on then, shouldn't I? We don't want to keep the raiders waiting."

She moves to leave, but Rita's calloused hand catching her arm with vice-like tenacity stops her in her tracks. "Whoa, there, vaultie," the settler says. "Where do you think you're going? I know things are all weird underground, but up here we've got this thing called a 'day-night cycle.' You're likely to get yourself eating by a yao guai, stomping off into the dark like that."

"A… a what?" River's Mandarin is a bit rusty, but she knows enough to know that anything so horrific that it was named after a type of demon is probably something she wants to give a _very_ wide berth.

"Yao guai. You know, the nasty four-legged radcritters with the teeth and the fangs and the saliva that'll melt your face off?"

"Oh, how pleasant."

"I know, right? And they like to hang out in the woods 'round these parts, so you'd best wait until it's light enough to see 'em. There's the remains of the house that used to be here just down past the crops. You can stay there for the night. There's a mattress with a sleeping bag, it'll keep you warm enough. You got food and water?"

"O-oh, uh, yeah, I'm good. Thanks." River can't tell if it's what she knows of this world or what she knew of the previous one that has caused her to be so stunned. On the one hand, even she has figured out that there are enough dangerous people and not enough ways of stopping them where letting a near-stranger into your home is a monumental act of trust. On the other hand, there weren't exactly people lining up to let her into their house for a cup of sugar back in the old days, at least not until she married Nate. (She's heard the words "communist spy" more than she cares to admit.) "I'm not sure how I can pay it back to you…"

Rita arches a brow. "Aren't _you_ the one running off on a mission to kill two dozen raiders with nothing but a pistol and a dog?" She jerks her head in the direction of the secondary house, the battered and roofless walls a faint silhouette against the dark blues and grays of nighttime. "It's over there. Let me or Marcus know if you need anything."

River has no intentions of taking advantage of their unforeseen hospitality any more than is strictly necessary. "All right," she says with a nod, and staggers off in the direction of the house.

Not that it can really be called that. As she draws closer, the damage done by the bombs becomes more and more apparent under the dim glow of the distance fire. One of the walls is completely gone, and the other three are in varying states of disrepair. Part of the fireplace still stand, with bits of the chimney cast about on the ground around the house, but apart from that what remains of the walls is barren. The only sign that anyone might have stepped foot here is the makeshift bed tucked in a corner next to an unlit oil lamp.

She wonders if she knew the people that lived here.

Dogmeat whimpers at her, and River realizes that she's been standing here like an idiot for a good couple of minutes now. "Sorry 'bout that, boy," she says, leaning down to run her fingers through the thick fur of his shoulders. "I was just thinkin' about stuff. You know, the sort of stuff that two-hundred-year-old science experiments think about. Existentialism and such. Let's get settled in."

After a dinner of Cram and the arduous task of prying off her scavenged armor, River has settled on the mattress and into the sleeping bag as best she can. One thing that hasn't changed about Massachusetts in the past two hundred years is just how fucking _cold_ it is; a familiar mid-autumn chill has settled over the area like a thick winter blanket, only the exact opposite because instead of feeling cozy and warm, River feels like she's back in the cryo-pod. "'Move to Boston, chase your dreams,'" she mutters, remembering what her friends from school had told her in the last few weeks before graduation. "'Never mind you've never once seen the temperature rise above eighty, it'll be _fiiiiine_.'"

Thankfully, she has a personal space heater in the form of Dogmeat, who squirms his way into the sleeping bag with her. After a few awkward moments of him getting himself turned around (stepping on her several times in the process), he settles down with a huff and leans his back against her side. The warmth he brings with him is a welcome gift, and in the end it's what allows River to finally fall into a fitful sleep.

* * *

River wakes up with a gasp, her mind wracked with horrors she cannot remember.

"Whoa, hey, easy." A pair of large hands come down to rest on her shoulders as she surges upwards with wild, panicked eyes. "It's all good. You're safe, nothing's tryin' to eat you." River looks up to see Marcus crouched over her, his mouth twisted downward into a concerned frown beneath his thick mustache. "You okay? You sounded like you were havin' a bit of a bad night."

"I, uh…" Even if she doesn't remember for certain, River can hazard a guess at what she was having nightmares about. The settlers don't need to know about that. "Oh, I'm fine," she says, brushing away his hands as she sits fully upright. "I just had this horrible dream that giant Mister Handies had come down from the sky and declared themselves our new evil robotic overlords."

Marcus clearly doesn't believe her, if the single quirk of his brow is anything to go by. "Uh-huh."

"It's true!" River pretends to be affronted. "And it was awful. Nothing but oil changes and routine maintenance, all day, every day. Thank God you stopped by to wake me up; I don't know if I could have handled another chrome polishing." She peers at him. "Why, uh… why did you wake me up?"

"'Sides the fact that it's morning?" Marcus grabs something from by his feet and drops it on her lap. At first glimpse, it seems like nothing more than a pile of dull green fabric, but River's heart skips a beat when she realizes that she recognizes the shade and texture. She reaches for it, and sure enough, it's a set of military fatigues. Her hands shake. Marcus doesn't notice and keeps talking. "That vaultsuit makes you a right bulls-eye for anything within shootin' range. Put those on over it; that'll keep you camouflaged."

"Right. Thank you." He wore fatigues like this when they first met, right after one of her matches...

Marcus gives a curt nod and heads back to the main house, leaving River alone to gather her scattered emotions as quickly as possible. She doesn't _need_ this, she doesn't need to have a goddamned breakdown in the presence of strangers who are depending on her to keep them safe. It takes everything she's got to swallow her sobs and blink away the tears that are dancing at the corners of her eyes.

Of all the clothes in the world, this was the set they had on hand. If God's still around, he's surely mocking her.

A whimper catches her attention, and she looks up to see Dogmeat sitting a few feet away and staring at her with a tilted head. It's then she realizes that he wasn't in the bedroll with her when she woke up. "Sorry, boy," she says with a shaky smile. "I didn't accidentally roll over on top of you last night, did I?" Dogmeat gets to his feet and approaches, nosing at her still-trembling hands with a concerned whine. "Don't worry, I'll be fine," River murmurs, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. "I just need a minute. Marcus was right; there's no way I'm going to be able to get close enough to Corvega to deal with the raiders when I look like some sort of muscular blueberry. Do blueberries even exist anymore? It's be a real fucking shame if they don't, which means they probably don't because it feels like everything that's happened since I woke up has been designed solely by the cold hands of fate to shit all over me." She realizes that she's starting to ramble and shuts up.

After a few seconds, Dogmeat pulls away and River sets to work putting the fatigues on over her vaultsuit. They fit a little loosely on her frame; they were likely built for someone taller than her. But they do their job well enough. She tucks the legs of the pants into her boots, puts her armor back on (which is significantly more difficult now that she's got an extra layer of clothing to deal with) and pulls herself to her feet.

She hadn't noticed it in the darkness the night before, but Tenpines Bluff sits near the top of, well, a bluff. She can see the surrounding area pretty well, and off in the distance she can see a massive overpass highway, broken and crumbled in the middle by the blast and the subsequent two hundred years of disrepair. Faint silhouettes marking long-abandoned cars can be seen, clustered like sardines all the way down the highway, and for the first time River gets a sense of how _vastly_ the world has changed in the centuries since she first descended into Vault 111. Sanctuary had been battered and blasted and Concord was a ghost town, but neither had really imparted the scale of destruction onto her quite like the view in front of her now does. An empty highway filled with empty cars, each one a skeleton of its former self. "Holy shit," she breathes.

Dogmeat leans against her legs and gazes expectantly up at her. She leans down slightly to pat his head, her eyes still transfixed on the view beyond the bluff. "All right, boy," she says. "Time to adjust to the new world order."

* * *

 _"_ _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"_

River dives into the bus stop, barely managing to void the barrage of bullets that nipped at her heels. "'Hey, River,'" she pants, slipping her voice into a poor impression of Preston's as she crawls on hands and knees into the corner of the stop, "'why don't you go out to Tenpines and kills some raiders for these farmers? You're a tough, Deathclaw-killing badass, I'm sure you can handle it!' Oh, _sure thing_ , Preston, I mean, I just stumbled out of the twenty-first century a few days ago, I hardly know how to shoot a gun, and a fucking _dog_ is a more capable survivor than me, but yeah, I managed to kill a giant murder-lizard by sheer fucking luck, I am _absolutely_ qualified for this task!" Outside, she can hear the distant shouts of the raiders from the assembly plant and the clack of dull canine nails against cracked pavement as Dogmeat rushes to join her in the fragile cover of the bus station. "God _damn_ it!" River whimpers. "God _damn_ it, I'm a _boxer_ , I hit people in controlled environments and they hit me back, I'm not some gunslinging hero from a b-list movie, rescuing the townsfolk out from under the thumb of the powerful villain!" She draws her knees to her chest and runs her hands through her hair, which has fallen loose from its bun in the chaos.

Things had gone downhill as soon as she'd gotten within shooting range of Corvega Assembly Plant. The raiders had built themselves up some damn heavy fortifications, even managing to set up auto-firing turrets, which had been the first wrench jammed into the gears of River's approach. Once she got close enough, the turrets locked onto her and started firing, subsequently alerting the raiders to her presence. _Why do they even need all those guns?! It's the apocalypse, I haven't seen anyone else besides these assholes since I got here, who'd want to attack them? Besides reckless bicentenarians trying to play the hero, I suppose_.

The gunfire has stopped. Is it save to move? Pulling herself into a crouch. River edges towards the end of the bus stop and every so carefully peers out.

 _BAM._ The concrete next to her all but explodes, and River ducks her head back in with a yelp. Great. Not only is she trapped, but she reckons that it's only a matter of minutes before they send someone down to make sure that she's good and dead. River slams her fist against the wall with a frustrated cry. She doesn't want to die like some caged rat. Not here. Not when Shaun is still out there.

A sudden burst of static from her Pip-Boy catches River's attention. Upon quick examination, she finds that the built-in radio is picking up some sort of frequency from within Lexington. It's extremely faint, though; she can only catch a few indecipherable snippets of a woman's voice amidst the buzz of feedback. River fiddles with the dial knob, trying to get a better listen.

 _"_ _..mated message re… is Scribe Haylen… ad Gladius… transmission range."_ The voice is clear now, or as clear as it's going to get. _"_ _Authorization Arcs-Pharaoh-Nine-Five. Our unit has sustained casualties, and we're running low on supplies. Requesting support or evac from our position at Cambridge Police Station."_ A pause. _"_ _Automated message repeated. This is Scribe Haylen of…"_

Cambridge Police Station. River knows where that is. And the way this woman is speaking, it sounds like she's some sort of military. But how? There's no government left to command a military… is there? Either way, the odds of the woman on the radio shooting her on sight are far slimmer than the odds of the raiders coming down and beating her face in.

 _But it's a distress signal_ , the devil's advocate part of her reasons. _They're probably in just as much trouble as you are, if not more._

She hesitates. And hesitates. And weighs her options. Does she stay here and hope that the raiders get bored and forget about her? Or does she run for uncertain safety with an unknown military unit that probably isn't even in any position to help?

 _"_ _Heeyyyyyy girlie! Why don't you come on out here and show us what you're made of."_

That voice is _way_ too close to her hiding spot. _Run it is, then._ "Come on, Dogmeat," she hissed, and promptly bolted for the safety of the city buildings.

"Hey!" One of the raiders who had come down from the assembly plant shouted. "Get back here!"

Fuck that. River runs as fast as she can, her lungs burning and her heart feeling as though it'll burst out of her chest as she sprints through the streets, trying to find a better place to hide. Dogmeat is right on her heels, and she can hear the footsteps of the raiders echo behind her. _Shit, shit, shit, shit, shiiiiit!_

Her eyes fall upon one of the few doors in the city that hasn't been busted down or boarded up. Heart still pounding, she races up to it and starts to fumble with the door knob, muttering every curse word she knows as she struggles to unjam it. After a few frantic seconds it gives way and she ducks inside, only waiting long enough for Dogmeat to follow her before slamming the door shut. She falls against it and slides to the ground. _Thank God,_ she thinks, tipping her head back and letting out a shaky sigh of relief.

Outside, she can hear the raiders pass by her new hiding spot. "Where'd she go?" one of them asks.

"I don't know," the other replies. "Doesn't matter. I don't think she'll be coming 'round here anytime soon."

The first raider laughs. "Yeah, y'got that right. And if she does, well, we'll show her why you don't mess with any of Jared's buddies. Not come on, let's get outta here before some of those ghouls show up to try and take a bite outta us."

 _What._

River doesn't move for several minutes, waiting until she is completely and utterly sure that the raiders have left before slowly getting to her feet. Ghouls. People rotted by the radiation, many becoming little more than feral animals. She remembers that Preston mentioned that the Quincy refugees had been attacked by feral ghouls in Lexington. Which is where she is right now.

Son of all the fucks.

Suddenly, the idea of a fortified police station with military presence seems like a goddamn oasis. Before River makes a run for it, she takes a moment to check out her surroundings. She's in the hallway of an apartment building, and each apartment contains that same grisly scene; skeletons scoured clean by time and radiation, collapsed by the south-facing windows and embracing each other in their beds. One skeleton sprawled out on the floor of one apartment's living room catches her eye. Well, actually, it's not so much the skeleton itself, per se, so much as the nail-studded, bloodstained baseball bat next to it. "Well, I guess there's no such thing as too many ways to defend yourself when everything's trying to kill you," River mutters as she grabs the bat. The added weight from the nails feels odd against her hands, but after a few casual practice swings she feels like she has the hang of it well enough. Newfound weapon in hand, she and Dogmeat step outside and head in the direction of Cambridge.

Barely a few minutes after leaving the apartment, however, River runs into her first ghoul.

She is passing through a pair of buildings with a piece of collapsed rubble creating a makeshift bridge between the two when she first hears the noise, a harsh, guttural groan that sounds like it came out of one of those "living dead" B-movies she used to sneak out to see with her friends in high school. She pauses, her knuckles whitening against the handle of the bat, and waits. After a few moments of silence, she steps forward again, and the noise returns, but louder and with _more_ of it, joining together in a blood-chilling cacophony.

That's when the first one begins to crawl down from the overhead ruins. And another, and another. As they fall to the ground one-by-one and stand up to face her, River gets a good look at them and immediately wishes that she hadn't. Preston had said they looked bad, but nothing he could have said would have prepared her for the withered, sallow skin stretched taut over twisted bones and clustered tumors. She stands there in shock for a few moments, completely oblivious to Dogmeat whining and tugging at the leg of her fatigues, imploring for her to _move_ in the only way he can.

She does start moving again when a ghoul that had been crawling across the group reaches out and wraps its fingers around her ankle, rough nails digging through cloth and piecing skin. The pain jolts River out of her state of shock, and she reacts with a ferocity that is almost feral in its own right, letting out a cry of " _No!_ " and bringing the bat down on the ghoul's head. The crunching sound as the nails enter its skull sends her stomach churning. River pries the bat from now-limp body of the ghoul and runs, the harsh growls of her pursuers dogging at her heals as surely as Dogmeat.

 _You know_ , she thinks as she vaults over the hood of one of the many cars scattered about the street, _if you had told me before the bombs hit that I'd be_ living _the living dead movies, I would have been very skeptical._ But here she is, fighting to outrun what could only be described as walking corpses because while they may have been human at one point, there is _nothing_ left alive in the hollow, feral eyes of the things chasing after her.

She doesn't know at what point exactly she managed to escape the ghouls. All she knows is that at some point the sounds of groaning and and feet pounding behind her faded away, and she was able to collapse against the nearest wall and slide to the ground. Her lungs scream for air, and each breath she takes burns. But she's alive. She's _alive_ , goddamn it.

Still gasping, she turns to face Dogmeat. He's more built for distance running than she is, so he's in better shape than her, but not by much. He leans against her, panting heavily, and River realizes that it's been a few hours since either of them had anything to drink. _Damn it, River, that's literally the first thing you got lectured about by your coach._ Sliding her pack off her shoulder and shifting through its contents, she pulls out one of the old milk bottles filled with water that Codsworth had backed for her, as well as the plastic dog bowl she had nabbed from the Morales' house ( _no, it's the Longs' house now_ ). "Here out go, boy," she says, twisting the bottle's cap off and pouring half the water into the bowl. "We'll get some more once we get to Cambridge, okay?"

Dogmeat immediately shoves his nose into the bowl, and laps greedily at the water. River takes a sip of what remains in the milk bottle. She makes a face; it smells fowl and tastes fowler. But water is water, and given the choice between drinking this and passing out from dehydration, she'll happily tip the bottle bag and chug. So that's what she does. Dogmeat finishes his water quickly as well, and the two sit there on the sidewalk for a few minutes before the quiet and the knowledge of the ghouls still wandering around out there somewhere is too much for her to bear. "Welp," she says, picking up the licked-clean dog bowl and shoving it back into her pack, "time to get moving, boy."

Dogmeat huffs at her.

"I _know_ it's been a long day. But it's not safe here. We've gotta go where the soldiers are until we figure out a way to get into Corvega without getting turned into Swiss cheese." She staggers to her feet. Her knees are still weak from running; she steadies herself as best she can, but it'll be a couple minutes before she can manage the pace needed. "Don't worry, we'll rest when we get there, okay?"

Dogmeat seems to accept this, and gets to his feet. River scratches at the base of his ear a until she gets a tail wag out of him before setting forth. _On the bright side,_ she thinks, _there's no way in hell that Cambridge can be any worse than Lexington._

* * *

Cambridge is a _lot_ worse than Lexington, actually, because not only are their more ghouls, but there are also _land mines._ _"_ _Fuck!"_ River shouts as another explosion goes off far too close for her liking. Gripping her pistol tightly in one hand and the baseball bat in the other, she bolts in the opposite direction, weaving through the labyrinth of explosives that has been set up across the street. But just because she's avoiding them doesn't mean the ghouls are. _Click._ _BOOM._ "Shit!" She dives to the right, hot debris bouncing off the makeshift armor and burning her fatigues.. "Son of a _dick!_ Hey, maybe you could _not_ set off _every damn one_ of the fucking things?" she shouts to the ghouls. "Food for thought!"

Of course, all shouting did was alert the ghouls to the fact that she was still alive and still a moving target. They come staggering towards her, and despite the amount of bullets that she puts in them with the 10mm, they just won't _stay down._ _Turns out radiation apparently makes you fucking bulletproof._ "Dogmeat!" she shouts towards the German Shepherd, whom she had previously ordered to stay back due to the land mines. "You can come help kill these things now!"

Dogmeat doesn't need to be told twice. He comes charging in, ramming into one of the ghouls and dragging it to the ground where he viciously tears at its throat. River turns her attention back to the bulk of the horde and starts shooting, not stopping until her ammo runs dry and the only thing that comes out of her gun is the click of the hammer. Then she whistles for Dogmeat to follow her and runs, because she is not the only one in the town shooting. In the distance, she can hear the distinct sound of laser fire, not too dissimilar to the sound of Preston's laser musket. In any other situation, she'd be doing her best to avoid the gunfire, but right now it's a beacon to her, a sign that there is someone else in this city that's alive and breathing and not trying to tear her apart.

She doesn't stop to consider _why_ they're shooting until she arrives at the police station and finds it just as plagued by ghouls as the streets.

But even with the ghouls it's still a safer option, because there are makeshift walls put up around the front entrance and of course there's the police station itself, concrete and imposing and standing solid even after all these centuries and _oh yeah,_ there's the person in the seven-foot-tall power armor with the laser rifle. She darts into the compound and swings the bat at the nearest ghoul's misshapen head. As it slumps to the ground, she turns to face the other ghouls laying siege on the station; her fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, and it's chosen "fight."

After a while,everything begins to blend into a huge blur of snarling and clawing and swinging. At one point, she thinks that she hears the person in the power armor shout, _"_ _Civilian in the perimeter! Check your fire!"_ But there's so much noise and chaos that she can't be certain that he said anything at all. The ghouls seems never-ending; just when the last one falls and she thinks she's done, another swarm comes rushing in.

Eventually, however, the last ghoul falls, and the compound is quiet save for the sound of the hydraulics in the power armor and the hushed voices of the two soldiers at the top of the stairs near the door. River allows herself a moment to relax, and as the bat slips from her numb fingers and clatters to the ground, she finds herself doing the same. Dogmeat trots up to her and gives her a good old-fashioned _am I a good boy_ look, his tail idly wagging and his muzzle coated in blood and bile and all sorts of things that River would rather not think about. She reaches out and runs her fingers through his fur, causing his tail wagging to intensify.

It's been a day and a half since she left Sanctuary Hills and she's been shot at, chased through a city twice, and almost eaten.

She is so _tired._

A voice cuts through the haze of weariness that threatens to overwhelm her. River recognizes it as the same voice that had shouted out earlier. "Civilian."

 _Civilian_ , she thinks. _Guess that's me._

She looks up.

* * *

 **A/N - Ha ha I'm a tease. Or I was unsure about how to end this chapter and decided to cop right the fuck out, either one. Some fun facts about this chapter.**

 **FFFM #14: This was the least fun chapter to write so far, if only because I know that the next chapter is going to be so much more fun and I want to write that chapter already but I'm not writing that chapter. Also there was all the school and work and project stuff. Yayyyyy.**

 **FFFM #15: I have an AO3 account now! It's "malochroma," same as everywhere else. I've moved all my chapters over there, and in the future I'll be posting both on here and on there. So if you like that format better, check it out over there. Fun Facts From Mal are going to be strictly FFn-only, though, so y'all get something special to make up for the lack of comprehensive formatting. Assuming that you find these at all interesting. Which you may not.**

 **FFFM #16: Corvega Assembly Plant is fucking bullshit if you don't have a long-range weapon on hand. The events in the fic are basically how they played out when I first tried to approach; the raiders almost killed me, I GTFO'd, found the signal, and came across the Brotherhood. The lesson to be learned here is "don't play a melee character if you're used to always playing ranged because you will suffer."**

 **FFFM #17: Something else that played out much the same when I first played is how River first encounters feral ghouls. I thought it was a scripted event at first, it just felt so orangic. I was walking through Lexington, trying to find my way to Corvega when zombies suddenly started crawling down from an overpass. It was some scary shit. I hated it and loved it at the same time.**


	7. Clad in Steel

**A/N - So the last update was, what, four months ago? God, I need to get better at this. Hopefully the DLC hype will keep me riding the Fallout 4 train for a while. (Also almost 50 follows wow okay.)**

* * *

 **Chapter Seven – Clad in Steel**

* * *

Imposing.

That's River's first impression of the man with the power armor and the snugly-fitting hood. Even taking into account her own less-than-impressive stature (buff or not, it's hard to be intimidating when you're five foot nothing), the fact that she's sitting on the ground, and the added height that the armor provides, he's probably still got a good foot on her in terms of height. He _towers_ over her, staring down at her with his heavy, dark brows knitted together in confusion. Dirt and dust are smeared across his face, and there's a streak of blood on his lip from a sharp cut that looks like it's only just now starting to heal over. There are a few noticeable dings and dents on his power armor, as well as a cluster of long, thin scratches across the plating on his left leg. Overall, he looks like he's been through one hell of a bad time.

She can relate.

" _Citizen_ ," the man repeats, his already-hard voice taking on an even harder edge, and River flushes furiously when she realizes that she's been sitting there staring blankly at him like a deer caught in the headlights. "We appreciate the assistance, but you're intruding on an important mission. What's your purpose here?"

 _"Pest control_." Maybe being a smart-ass to the man wearing approximately half a ton of metal isn't the best idea, but River feels the need to take back some control over the situation she's found herself in, and if sassing the metal man makes her feel better... "Seems you've got a bad ghoul infestation. We'll have to fumigate the whole place."

The man's eyes narrow dangerously. "Avoiding the question is a surefire way of getting yourself ejected from the compound," he threatens.

"Okay, okay, _okay._ " River staggers to her feet. "Just don't point your gun at me, all right? Please? I've had enough people shooting at me for one day. Look, I sort of crawled out of a Vault up north a couple of weeks ago, okay?" She pulls down the collar of her fatigues to reveal the bright blue underneath. "I'm still getting used to this whole, well, _everything_. I was in a bad spot over in Lexington and I heard your signal and I thought, 'okay, people who won't immediately try to kill me, maybe they can help me get my bearings.' Though I see you've had problems of your own." She nods at the feral corpses littering the ground around them.

"We've experienced some complications since arriving," the man in the power armor admits. "I appreciate your honesty; not many people would admit to being from a Vault."

"Well, if there's a good reason for me to lie about it, I haven't found it yet." River folds her arms over her chest and meets his still-stern gaze with an equally stern stare of her own. "Why does it matter to you where I came from? I haven't tried shooting you or bashing your head in or eating you, that has to count for something, right?"

"You raise a fair point," the man concedes. "If I appear suspicious, it's because our mission here has been difficult. Since the moment we've arrived in the Commonwealth, we've been constantly under fire."

River's lips twists into a wry smile. "Well, doesn't that sound familiar." She might be imagining it, but she thinks that she can see the corner of the man's mouth twitch upwards slightly from the briefest of moments. Now that the two of them have reached the understanding that neither one has any intention of shooting the other, she feels herself relaxing slightly. "Guess I'm not the only one out here trapped between a rock and a horde of... _that_." She nods to one of the feral corpses.

"Indeed," the man in the armor says. "If you want to continue pitching in, we could use an extra gun on our side, and we might be able to provide you with a few supplies in return."

River hesitates. On the one hand, anything he could give her would be nothing but helpful in her current predicament. Especially if it involves ammo; she's pretty sure she won't be able to take on a factory full of raiders with a _baseball bat_. And, in addition, the way he carries himself and calls her "citizen" and "civilian" _screams_ military, and that instills an innate sense of trust in her born from Nate's time as a soldier. But on the other hand, it's been two hundred years and she doesn't know these people, not the man with the power armor, not the injured man in the jumpsuit on the top step outside the station, and not the woman in the faded red turtleneck and bulletproof vest tending to his wounds. And they haven't made an effort to introduce themselves yet. On the third, radioactive mutant hand, she didn't know Preston and the others back in Sanctuary Hills before she helped them out, and that's turned out all right for her.

So she settles on cautious eagerness. "I _do_ want to help you," she says, "but you haven't told me who you are or why you're here. I've been in a metal box underground for a _really_ long time, I don't know what's going on up here. I mean, what if your 'mission' is blowing up my house? Or the entire coast? I _like_ the coast, even if it's let itself go over the years. As least give me a _reason_ to say yes before you ask me that."

The man seems to consider her words. "That's a fair assessment," he says eventually. "Very well. My name is Paladin Danse. And over there" he nods to the two near the station entrance, "is Scribe Haylen and Knight Rhys. We're from the Brotherhood of Steel." Upon seeing River confused expression, he clarifies. "We're an order of people that seeks to understand the nature of technology. Its power, its meaning to us as humans. And we fight to secure that power from those who would abuse it."

Okay. So not military. At least, not in the sense that River remembers. "Define 'abuse.'"

"Before the Great War, technology became more of a burden than a benefit," Paladin Danse explains, gesturing to the ruined buildings around them. "The atom bomb, bio-engineered plagues, and FEV are clear examples of the horrors that technological advancement had wrought."

River doesn't need someone to tell her this. The technological advancements that came around after World War II quickly became a double-edged blade; breakthroughs in medicine came hand-in-hand with advancements in biological warfare, and new forms of energy quickly proved to be more than humanity could handle. Hell, the economic collapses and the Resource Wars came about because humanity ended up moving forward at a pace faster than it could feasibly sustain. "That certainly sounds like a noble enough goal," she says. "But why are you _here?_ Unless there's an atom bomb hidden in that police station, there's not exactly a whole lot of advanced technology to be exploiting."

"You'd be surprised," Paladin Danse replies. "It's not uncommon to see power armor and miniature nuclear explosives in the hands of raiders and gangs. We were out here on recon duty, but we've run into continuous problems out here. Now, we're down a man and our supplies are running low. I've been trying to send a distress call to my superiors, but the signal's too weak to reach them."

"Sir." The woman in the combat vest... Scribe Haylen... stands up and turns to face the two of them. "If I may?"

Paladin Danse nods. "Proceed, Haylen."

Haylen points upward, and when River's gaze follows suit she sees some sort of broadcast tower on the roof, likely the sort that the police would use back in the pre-everyone's-dead days to radio on-duty officers. "I've modified the radio tower on the roof of the station," Haylen explains to River, "but it just isn't enough. What we need is something that will boost the signal enough to reach our superiors. Without it, we're stuck here with no way to request backup or supplies, and the ghoul hordes aren't getting any smaller."

"Our target is ArcJet Systems," Danse supplies, drawing River's attention once more. "It's not far from here, and it contains the technology we need: the deep-range transmitter. We need to infiltrate the facility, secure the transmitter, and bring it back here."

Rivers folds her arms over her chest. "Sounds like a pretty well-thought out plan," she says. "Why do you need my help, then? I'm not exactly a science-oriented person. I probably wouldn't be able to tell this transmitter thing apart from any other computer bits or bobs."

"Like I said," Danse answers, "we need the extra gun on our side. Rhys is incapacitated right now, and without any details on what's within ArcJet, I'm hesitant to go in there without backup. The deep-range transmitter is essential, and we can't afford to take any risks in regards to its retrieval. So?" he asks, looking at her expectantly. "Are you willing to help us?"

It makes a certain amount of sense, and certainly explains why the man is so willing to hinge his mission's success; he doesn't exactly have a breadth of options available to him at the moment. But can she really afford to say yes? She has her own problems to worry about; she needs to clear out the assembly plant, she needs to help the folks at Tenpines and help Preston, and most important of all she needs to _get to Diamond City and find her goddamn son_. She was already carrying so much weight on her shoulders, she couldn't afford to carry more. This man, this Paladin Danse, he'd surely understand that. He wouldn't blame her for prioritizing her current goals, especially when they involve helping someone not get shot by raiders.

The words are out of her mouth almost quicker than she can think them.

"I'll do it."

Because even if Paladin Danse wouldn't blame her for not helping, she would. _Goddamn conscience._

"Excellent," Danse nods. "Head into the police station and resupply yourself, then let me know when you're ready to begin." He turns his attention to the other two. "Haylen, take Rhys inside and bind his wounds. Rhys, once you're on your feet, I want you to make sure that the perimeter is secure while I'm gone. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Haylen says, while Rhys lets out a pained grunt of what sounds to be affirmation.

As Danse heads into the police station and Haylen pulls Rhys to his feet and half-carries him inside as well, River lingers behind a little, still trying to take in the gravity of the situation. _Brotherhood of Steel_. It doesn't sound like anything she's heard before. And Paladin Danse had called it an _order_ , not a group or a military. She can't help but wonder for a moment if she's just agreed to help the members of a bizarre technology-worshiping cult. It certainly wouldn't be the most fucked up thing she's seen since being defrosted. The Deathclaw still tops that list.

Dogmeat leans against her leg and wines. "Don't worry, boy, I'm fine," she murmurs, leaning down to scratch behind his ears. Her efforts are rewarded by a vigorous tail-wag. "Don't worry, we'll help these people and get back to taking care of the raiders in the factory soon. Then we can go back to Sanctuary, tell Preston, and then..." She sighs. "Then we go to Diamond City. Please tell me you know the way to Diamond City, because I have no fucking clue what that's supposed to be."

Dogmeat lets out a _hrrruff_ and starts trotting up the steps.

"Thank you for your insight, oh Wise and Furry One," River grumbles before following after him; he's paused at the doorway and turned to look at her as if to say, _are you just gong to stand there all day or are you coming inside?_ "Give me a second, Dogmeat," River mutters. "I'm not as _laissez-faire_ as you are." She envies Dogmeat's ability to take everything in stride. Raiders? No big deal. Ghouls? That's fine. Giant fucking murder lizard? Yeah, whatever, is the person okay?

The inside of the police station is just as much of a mess as the outside. Torn and faded papers are scattered across the floor, and a couple of the inner walls have completely toppled over. The filing cabinets are dented and covered in a thick layer of rust and dust, while the counter that Danse is currently checking over his rifle at looks like it might collapse under its own weight at any moment. Haylen has set Rhys down by one of the intact walls and is currently looking over the ragged wounds in his side. "So," Rhys said through a clench-toothed smirk, "What's the diagnosis?"

"Hrm. Your odds don't look good. I'm afraid we're going to have to take you out back and shoot you." There's a teasing lilt to Haylen's voice, a sign that the injuries aren't nearly so dire as they look. It makes River relax a little bit; if they're comfortable enough with their situation to be jocular about it, then maybe she won't have to worry as much.

Rhys lets out a chuckle before groaning and doubling over in pain. "Ah, god _damn_ it, don't make me laugh. Still can't believe that ghoul managed to get a hold of me."

"Well, maybe if you'd been watching your back instead of playing the tough guy, it wouldn't have happened," Haylen retorts. "I'm going to inject you with a couple stimpacks and some Med-X to get you on your feet a bit quicker, but don't take that as an invitation to go running back into the action, okay? Don't strain yourself too hard and keep an eye on your bandages."

"Right, yeah, got it." Rhys's gaze flits over to River, and the look in his eyes grows immediately hostile. River bristles a little under the force of his glare – what the fuck did _she_ do? – before pointedly turning away and looking at anything but him. Danse glances up from his weapon and seems to mistake her stance for one of confusion, because he nods his head in the direction of the back rooms.

"You'll find some ammo for your pistol in there. Most of our weaponry uses fusion cell technology, but we carry around conventional ammo for when we need it," he says, before returning to his work.

"Ah, right, thank you." River quickly heads into what she discovers to be the remnants of a locker room, and sure enough finds the ammo Danse spoke of on the table in the middle of it. Her fingers are shaky as she reloads her pistol, pocketing the rest of the ammo for later. The weight of the gun in her hands, her finger pressed against the side of the barrel just above the trigger, is starting to feel lighter, more natural. She wants to tell herself that she doesn't know what that says about her, but the truth is that she knows _exactly_ what it means.

"Hey." River jumps a little at the voice and turns around to see Scribe Haylen standing in the doorway. "Let me take a look at you before you head out. You look like you've been through a rough time out there."

River is suddenly distinctly aware of every minor cut and bruise on her face that she's acquired since leaving Sanctuary. "You don't have to do that," she says hastily. "I'm fine enough, I promi- _whoa!_ "

In the space of about half a second, Haylen has crossed the room and shoved her into one of the chairs. "It's not that I don't trust you," she says, "but I'd feel a lot better knowing that you'll be able to watch Paladin Danse's back out there."

"Uh. Okay." It's kind of hard to argue with a woman who just pushed her into a chair like she weighed nothing, so River promptly shuts her mouth and lets Haylen give her a once over. After a couple of minutes, she hesitantly says, "So, you're some sort of doctor, then? Is that what a scribe is?"

Haylen shakes her head. "No. Every member of the Brotherhood is taught basic first aid techniques, and since Danse's armor makes treating wounds difficult and Rhys couldn't treat a ghoul scratch to save his life, it's up to me to make sure that nobody ends up getting an infection or worse. It'd be easier if we had some Rad-Away, but we're lucky enough to have the supplies we do have." She grabs River's chin and turns her head to get a better look at one of the cuts on her cheek. "That scar underneath is pretty old. How'd a vault dweller get something like that?"

"Workout partner came in drunk and accidentally threw a five-weight at my face instead of a water bottle," River replies. She glazes over the pre-War part; like she told Danse, she doesn't have a reason to _lie_ about it yet, but she figures it's best to save the "I'm older than the wasteland itself" bombshell for _after_ she helps out with their problem at ArcJet. "And then I got hit in the nose while spotting during bench-pressing. And _then_ there was the punk playing around with the butterfly knife; that's how I got the one on my lip."

"Ah, right." The corner of Haylen's mouth curls up in a wry smile. "Sorry; I'm just used to thinking of scars in the context of combat. Plus, you don't see a lot of vault dwellers with scars like that. Not that you see a lot of vault dwellers above ground at all, of course."

"Yeah, I've gathered as much. So what _is_ a Scribe, anyway?"

"Well, we're tasked with keeping records of the technology we secure. What it is, how it works, what it was used for before the War... I know that sounds like just boring old bookkeeping, but understanding and cataloging technology is the Brotherhood's main goal, and we can't do that if we don't have proper records." Haylen pauses for a second. "Anyways, sorry about the others," she says. "I know that it may not seem like it, but they're good men. Danse is just all soldier; protocol is his bread and butter. And Rhys... well, let's just say he's as hard-headed as a Mister Gutsy. But you know what? I'd trust them both with my life, because they're good people and that's harder to come by nowadays."

River winces as Haylen gently dabs at the cut with a grayed cloth, wiping the half-dried blood off of her cheek. "I've... gathered that as well. I-it's not that I don't trust them; I _know_ there's still good people out here, and Danse seems like a fair enough man." Rhys... she doesn't _know_ what Rhys's deal is, but he's not shooting her, so that's good enough for her. "It's just... well, imagine that you've just wandered into the apocalypse and you have no clue what the ever-loving fuck is going on. You'd be a bit on edge, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so. You're actually pretty lucky; most vault dwellers don't last a week out here on their own."

"I guess it helps that I'm not on my own." River can hear the _click-click-click_ of her furry companion's nails against the floor in the main room. "Speaking of which, is it all right is I leave Dogmeat here? I don't really want him running head-first into laser fire by accident."

"Dogmeat? What kind of name is that?"

"Ehhh, he came with the name. I haven't actually known him that long; he just walked up to me on my first day out and decided 'hi, you're my person now, I love you.' He's a good boy, though, and I always did want a dog."

"I imagine they didn't have many dogs in the vault you were from."

"No," River says. "That they did not."

"Well," Haylen says with a smile, "If he behaves himself, I don't see why not. He does seem pretty friendly, and it wouldn't hurt to have a nose like that around the base. The Brotherhood doesn't keep many animals around, either. Quinlan's got his cat, but..." Having finished looking over River's injuries, she stands up straight and places her hands on her hips. "As for you, I'd say you're all clear. Just be careful out there; we've been getting some strange readings at ArcJet, and we have no clue what's out there."

Well, it can't be any worse than the Deathclaw.

Unless it's something like two Deathclaws. "I'll keep an eye out for trouble, don't worry."

"Good," Haylen nods. "I need to get back to Rhys. And... thanks for the help; I feel a lot better about all this, knowing that Danse isn't heading out there alone." With that, she heads back into the main room.

River lingers for a moment. _If nothing else,_ she thinks, _at least Haylen is good people._ The Scribe had said that good folks were hard to find, but honestly, River's luck has been 50-50 on that front. She'd had to deal with the raiders in Concord and at Corvega, but she'd run into Preston and the other Quincy survivors as well. Rita and Marcus had helped her out by giving her a place to sleep for the night instead of letting her wander out into the Commonwealth in the dark. And here she was, having her wounds looked over by a near-stranger while another near-stranger offered her supplies and a place to catch her breath in exchange for help finding some weird science doodad.

And none of them have seemed to _care_ that she's Chinese. Hell, Jun Long's Chinese, and the others in Sanctuary treat him with the same respect and trust that they would anyone else. It is, in a weird and bitter way, almost comforting to know that decency and kindness has outlived the anti-Chinese hysteria she grew up in. Of course, people are probably finding new and exciting ways to hate each other for factors outside their control, because River is not so naïve to believe that there is no more prejudice _period_ , but it's still a nice thought.

The chair she has been sitting in creaks in protest as she stands up, rolling her shoulder to make sure that there isn't still any lingering pain in her arm from the Deathclaw fight before she heads out with Danse. As she takes one final look around the locker room, she sees a pair of patrolman sunglasses resting on one of the old, open lockers, and on a whim grabs them and shoves them haphazardly onto her face. _There,_ she thinks. _Now it'll be a bit less obvious when I'm on the verge of another breakdown_.

As she leaves the locker room, Danse turns to look at her, helmet in hand. If the addition of the sunglasses to her already slapdash wardrobe surprises him in any way, he's damn good at hiding it. "You ready to move out?" he asks.

River nods. "Yeah." As ready as she'll ever be, anyway.

"Good. Rhys, Haylen, keep the radio on and make sure that the perimeter is secure. If something happens, radio me and let me know. This isn't the time to be playing hero; we can't afford to lose any more men out here." His dark gaze is focused especially on Rhys as he says that last bit.

"Yes, sir," Haylen nods.

Danse turns back to River. "Follow me, and try not to lag behind." Flipping the helmet around in his hands so that it's facing the right way, he dons it and heads out the door of the police station. River follows, stopping just long enough to tell Dogmeat, "You be a good boy and stay here, okay buddy?" After receiving the bark of confirmation she needs, she heads out.

(She picks up the baseball bat on her way out; she has the pistol and the brass knuckles, but she's not going to say no to added insurance against becoming ghoul food.)

It's a struggle to keep up with Danse as he leads her down the side alleyway. Try not to lag behind, he'd said, even though a single stride of his is at least double one of her's. _Goddamned tall people._ "So," River says, trying to make conversation. "Why set up base at the police station, of all places? I mean, it's not exactly what you'd call spacious, and it's not like it's particularly hard to reach. Hell, I was able to walk right up to the front door, and I'm just some jackass with a dog."

"Given the nature of the facility, we felt it would be tactically advantageous to search it for weapons and ammunition," Danse explains. "The radio tower on the roof was an unexpected boon, but it obviously has its shortcomings that need to be rectified."

"Oh. So looting, then."

"'Looting' implies it was done for selfish reasons. That couldn't be further from the truth; given the dire situation we were in, it was a necessity. We were critically low on supplies, and we needed to secure shelter that we could easily defend from enemies." He turns his head slightly towards her, and even though River cannot see his face she can still easily picture the pointed look he is giving her. "Furthermore, I have difficulty believing that your current equipment came from whatever Vault you're from."

He has her there. And it's not like there are still any cops around to object. "You know what? That is a very good point and I would like to retract my previous statement. So how far away is this ArcJet, anyway?" River could tell you exactly where each diner and church in Boston used to be, but the Cambridge area is a different story entirely.

"It's not far. Just a short hike to the west. If we take this route, we should be able to avoid the larger packs of ferals infesting Cambridge." They've hit the main road out of town now; the late afternoon suns casts a golden sheen against the surface of the river and bathes the barren trees in a glow that looks almost _too_ inviting. River _knows_ that the water is probably radioactive as hell from what Sturges told her about the stream back by Sanctuary, but from the road it still looks pretty. The reflected sunlight is also very _bright_ , and she's grateful for her sunglasses to help block out most of the glare.

"Traveling this far from the police station is a risk, but getting that transmitter up and running is our top priority," Danse continues. "If it was up to me, I'd relocate my team, but Scribe Haylen detected some disturbing energy readings in the area that need to be investigated."

"What sort of readings?" River asks.

"I'm not sure. We don't know much about them, except that they're short-lived and broadcast on a frequency obtainable only through means of advanced technology. We're concerned that whoever or whatever is creating those energy readings might be a potential threat, so it's our job to investigate."

"Ah." A thought springs to mind. "Hey, so... this is going to sound like a really dumb thing to say, but the way you've been talking about recon and stuff... there aren't usually Brotherhood-type people here in the Commonwealth, are there? Where do you guys come from?"

"There are Brotherhood chapters all across the wasteland," Danse says. "My unit is a member of the East Coast chapter. We're primarily stationed in the Capital Wasteland, but we've been working to establish a presence here in the Commonwealth."

"Why?"

"Well, for what we can potentially learn here, for a start. I'm not sure how much they taught about pre-War America in your Vault, but Boston used to be a historical landmark before the bombs fell. There are also several significant points of technological interest. Places like factories, military bases, the CIT. It might surprise you to learn that my recon team isn't the first to visit the Commonwealth. Over the past seven years, two other teams were sent here by the Brotherhood to gather technology. The first team's mission was a huge success. They came back with crates full of pre-War artifacts and historical documents. The second wasn't so fortunate. Shortly after they arrived, we lost contact with them and they haven't been heard from since."

The Paladin' voice darkens slightly underneath the static of his helmet radio. "As for my team, we've lost four good men to this godforsaken wasteland. We've been a target from the moment we arrived."

"By ghouls? Or...?" River knows the ghouls are trouble, especially in the hordes they seem so fond of traveling in, but she has trouble imagining them being able to take out four heavily armed soldiers.

"The ferals were just part of it," Danse says. "Between them, the numerous raider gangs near Lexington, and of course the Institute, it feels like we've been fending off attacks since we stepped foot in the Commonwealth." _You and me both, pal._ "But despite our setbacks," he continues, "I don't intend to give up and head home. _Or_ end up missing."

But when he turns to look at her again, River has already stopped in the middle of the street, staring at him with brows furrowed behind her shades. "The Institute," she says. "You're not the first person I've heard that name from. But what the hell _are_ they? I mean, I know they grab people and replace them with doppelganger spies or something, but what _are_ they?"

Danse pauses for a second. "There's a lot the Brotherhood doesn't know about the Institute," he says. "What we _do_ know is that they're a group of individuals who have developed some very advanced and very _dangerous_ technology, and while we're not sure of their exact motives, their actions have made it clear that their intentions are anything but peaceful."

"Oh. That's... fucking dandy." So, on top of ghouls, raiders, giant irradiated insects, and _motherfucking Deathclaws_ , she also has to deal with a secret behind-the-curtain organization of malevolent mad scientists stealing people from their beds. "Man, it's just been good news out of good news since I woke up, hasn't it?" The words start to tumble from her lips, and she knows she looks foolish right now, but she doesn't care. "Hey, River, guess what, your husband is dead and your baby's been kidnapped! Oh, also you've been in cryo-sleep for two hundred years, surprise! And let's not forget to mention that the world's gone to shit and is full of people who want to kill you and let's not forget the _fucking murder lizards_ because I am _never_ going to be over that shit! And to top it all off, there's some shady assholes going around _replacing people_ and no one fucking knows why!" She violently throws her hands up in the air before dragging them down across her face. _Fuck_ , but does she want to punch the doctor who'd lied about the cryo-pods in the face.

The fact that he's been dead for almost two centuries by now is only a small comfort.

Danse stares at her. "You've... been in cryogenic suspension for two centuries?" He asks, disbelief flooding his voice.

"Two hundred and _ten_ , apparently." River's voice is muffled by her hands. "I missed out on so many birthdays. All because Vault-Tec wanted to see what would happen." She lifts her head enough to meet his gaze as best she can through his helmet. "The Brotherhood... knows what Vault-Tec did, right?"

"We are aware of the true purpose behind the Vaults. And there are records of cryonic technology being experimented with before the bombs dropped. But never anything on the level that you're describing. This..." Danse shakes his head. "This is..."

"A conversation we can have _after_ we find that device thing that you really need?" The details of her times as an ice-pop aren't something she wants to suggest in the middle of an open road. They're not something she wants to discuss at _all_ , but now is an especially poor time for it.

"Right. Of course." Danse snaps right back into Serious Soldier Mode. "Our first priority is securing the deep-range transmitter, and if possible to discover the source of the energy readings. Let's go; we can discuss this more after we return to the police station."

"Gre-at," River groans. "Looking forward to it."

* * *

 **A/N - A few facts about this chapter, because that's what everyone's here for.**

 **FFFM #18: This chapter ended at a sooner spot than I expected it to. I wnated it to end at some point inside ArcJet, but this turned out to be a really good place to end it. That's why this chapter is a little shorter than the others. That makes most of this chapter just Talking to Brotherhood Folks and less Actually Doing Things, but we get some nice development out of Haylen, so it's not a total loss. I really like Haylen, so being able to expand on her character was pretty fun.**

 **FFFM #19: I also wasn't intending for River to reveal to Danse that she was Capsicle'd until Chapter Ten. However, once River started rambling I couldn't stop her, and honestly it's a decent enough place to put the reveal where I can work with it.**

 **FFFM #20: I have no idea how to write Paladin Danse and am basically winging it at this point. Good thing he's not the love interest or anything! Oh.**


	8. False Skin

**A/N - Hey, look at that, updated in under a month. I'm getting better at this.**

* * *

 **Chapter Eight – False Skin**

* * *

"So, this is ArcJet, huh?" Even with its orange pain withered away and replaced with a thin layer of rot and rust, the building is impressive enough, even if it's smaller than what she expected.

Danse nods. "Before the war, it was an aerospace contractor, specializing in developing advanced communication and aviation systems for the militar–" He stops himself, shaking his head. "Of course, you know this already."

"Actually, I didn't."

"What?"

"I wasn't a scientist or an engineer way back when, Paladin," River explains, pushing her bangs away from her face and adjusting her sunglasses. "I was a _boxer,_ an athlete of sorts, and I was never especially proficient in the computer sciences. My... my husband was in the military for a time, so I knew a bit about what was going on over there, but beyond that I couldn't tell you the difference between RobCo and General Atomics." That's an exaggeration on her part; as if Codsworth would _ever_ let her confuse the two.

But it's an exaggeration that gets the point across, and Danse nods his understanding before continuing. "In that case, ArcJet's focus was on aerospace engineering. We don't have much information on them, but what we do have suggests that they were in the process of developing something designed for interplanetary exploration when the bombs fell. We _also_ know that they were contracted to develop the deep-range transmitter."

"Wait, really?" River raises a hand to shield her eyes as she gives the building another once over. "They were building _space stuff_ in a building this size?"

"The upper parts of the building were primarily for corporate dealings and research labs. Most of the development took place in the sub-levels," Danse explains. "With luck, that will be where the deep-range transmitter is as well. Come on; there shouldn't be any external security, so we'll head through the front door."

"It worries me that you specified 'external.'"

"I wouldn't have asked for your help if I didn't think there'd be any risk of danger." Danse approaches the door. However, before he opens it, he stops to look at her "Listen, we do this clean and quietly. No heroics, and by the book. Understood?"

River shrugs. "I'm following your lead, Paladin," she points out. "You're the one who knows what we're looking for, and you're the one who knows how to get to it. And I don't exactly intend on wandering off."

"Outstanding. Remember, our primary target is the deep-range transmitter. Stay focused, and check your fire. I don't want to be hit by stray bullets."

Given the armor, it'd be a little difficult to shoot around him, but that's what the bat is for. And the brass knuckles. And her own two fists, should it come to that. She hopes it doesn't. "After you."

As the two of them step inside the factory, she realizes with a start that she's starting to become desensitized to the destruction. The scattered desks and collapsed parts of the ceiling barely faze her as she steps over them. The emptiness, however, still makes her uneasy, and she grips the bat tighter for comfort.

"It was corporations like this that were the last nail in the coffin for mankind," Danse says with undisguised disgust as he tromps across the battered lobby. "They exploited technology for their own gains, pocketing the cash and ignoring the damage they'd done."

"Huh," River says. "You know, I'd have pointed the blame at the excessive propaganda and rampant xenophobia, but I'll admit that the whole 'turning war into a profiteer's game' thing didn't exactly _help_ matters. There were a lot of factors, really." She takes another quick look around the room before following Danse down a hallway and around the corner.

And almost runs right into him when he stops dead in his tracks. "Whoa, hey, what's the matt–" She stops speaking when she looks around him to peer into the room, because while the sight of ruin may not affect her the same way it used to, the pieces of destroyed Protectron scattered across the floor _definitely_ do. "Oh."

"Look at these wrecks," Danse says sharply, stepping into the room. "It appears that the facility's automated security system has already been dealt with." He kneels down to expect one of the destroyed robots, handling the metallic remains with surprising delicacy as he turns it over to get a better look. Something on the casing makes him swear underneath his breath. "Damn it. I was hoping to avoid this."

"So..." River leans over him to get a better look at the damage, pursing her lips in confusion. "The fact that we don't have to fight our way through a wall of Protectrons is a _bad_ thing in your eyes, then?" she questions. "I mean, this could all have just been done in the initial blast, right?"

"It wasn't. Look at this." Danse jabs a metal clad finger at a scorch mark on the casing. "Laser fire."

"It... could have just been raiders."

"Without a single spent ammunition casing, or a single drop of blood spilled? No, these robots were clearly assaulted by Institute synths."

"Oh." River tries not to let her dismay show on her face. "How long ago were they here? Do you think they came for the transmitter?"

"I don't doubt it. It's not uncommon for there to be conflict with the Institute over pieces of lost technology. As for the timeframe, these marks are still fresh, and the Protectron remains are still warm. They were active recently, which means that there's a chance that these technological nightmares are still around. Keep your guard up; we can't afford to be caught by surprise. Let's move out."

"Uh, right." River officially has no clue what's going on. Well, she hasn't had a clue since the bombs dropped, but now it is especially apparent to her that any knowledge she may have once possessed about the world is completely meaningless. So, she follows Danse's lead once more, gripping the bat in her hands tighter than ever and peering around each corner twice before she rounds it because Danse's words have instilled a sense of unshakable dread in her.

It's not long, however, before another problem rears its ugly head. And it's the most frustrating kind of problem there is: a locked door. "Well, uh... never too late to learn how to pick a lock?" River suggests with a sheepish, half-hearted grin. "I hear there are people who can work miracles with a couple of bobby pins."

"Not on this door," Danse replies brusquely. "We'll need to find a way to unlock it remotely. You take a look around and see what you can find. I'm going to make sure the area's secure."

"On it." The computer terminal is the obvious place to start, but when River tries to boot it up she finds it password-locked. _Figures._ Putting the bat down against the side of the desk, she begins shuffling through the papers and equipment on the desks to see if she can find any clues to what the password would be. _Unreadable, unreadable, lab report, Bunsen burner, unreadable, I don't even know what that does, science shit I don't understand..._

As she searches through, a concerning thought wriggles its way into her mind. Danse had called synths "technological nightmares." She still remembers saving Jules from being shot by his friends, and _he_ certainly hadn't seemed like a nightmare... right?

That nagging voice in her head that reminds her of everything that's wrong in the world rears its head with a vengeance, and reminds her that she doesn't understand anything about the world anymore, that two centuries have passed and can she really trust her own judgment anymore? Maybe Jules was dangerous. Maybe she shouldn't have stepped in when she did.

She quickly shakes that thought out of her head. _No,_ she tells herself, _there's no way that standing aside and letting a scared man be shot is ever the good idea. I don't care if it's two hundred years in the future, I wouldn't care if it was two thousand years in the future. The minute I stop doing the right thing might as well be the day I stop looking for Shaun, because I wouldn't deserve to be his mother if I went down that road._

Desperate to distract herself from that train of thought, she raises her voice and calls out, "Hey, Paladin, what _was_ this room, anyway?"

"Some sort of laboratory, I would imagine," Danse replies. "Given that this is the first place where we've come across a door sealed in this manner, I'd also hazard a guess that this is where they separated the lower-level clearance work from their bigger projects."

"Like the transmitter?"

"Exactly."

River spots another terminal to the left out of the corner of her eye and makes a beeline for it. _If this one is locked as well, I swear to fucking God..._ Thankfully, it is not, and she manages to access the files with little difficulty. _Let's see here, a reminder about password security, guess people weren't keeping up to date about it... "Automated Password Change?" Jackpot!_ She clicks on it and reads through the notice.

 _According to our records... not been changed in three (3) months... your new password is... Got it!_ "Hey, Paladin, got a pen?"

"No. Why?"

"It's just... eh, never mind. I'll get that door open for you before you can say 'open sesame.'" River moves back to the main terminal and punches the password in. Finding the door controls, she quickly unlocks the door. "Voila! Behold, the technological genius that was me finding this asshole's terminal password! Can you believe this guy was working on secret military-contracted communications stuff and he didn't bother changing his fucking password for three months? Even I'd know better than that shit, and I'm terrible with compu _shit!_ " River barely manages to dive cover behind the desks as laser fire splits the air and hits the wall behind her. "What the fuck was _that?!_ "

"Enemy fire!" Danse shouts. "Stay behind cover!"

 _Holy shit, thank you, Paladin Obvious! I never would have thought that it's our_ enemies _trying to murder me! Where would I be without your stunning fucking wisdom?_ River grabs her pistol and holds it close, waiting until there's a brief break in the laser fire to return the favor. In the hazy, dim light flickering down from the overhead fixtures, it's difficult for her to see who exactly is shooting her, but she can see enough of their thin silhouette to realize that something is slightly off about them. The way they move is a little too stiff, the area around their joints just a little too thin.

Her experience with boxing hasn't given her a whole lot of knowledge when it came to holding and shooting a gun, but she knows a thing or two about the human body, and it was that joints were kind of important. So that's where she aims, mainly around the shoulders. A few of her shots hit their mark, sending the figure staggering back as they drop their weapon. That's when Danse steps in, introducing their shadowed adversary to a barrage of laser fire of his own. River doesn't relax when the silhouette finally falls, though, if only because it took way too many bullets and way to many laser blasts to put it down in the first place. "So," she gasps, "Two questions. First, what the _fuck_ was that? Second, was that the only one?"

Danse doesn't get the chance to answer her first question, because the two shapes stepping out of the shadows beyond the door answer her second one. River yelps and ducks once more. Wondering bleakly to herself why she can't even go a single day outside of Sanctuary without being shot at or almost mauled by anything and everything in sight, she waits once more for the sounds of gunfire to cease and the flashing lights racing over her head to stop before she stands up, ready to face down whatever it is that is so determined to see her dead.

When she finds herself face-to-face with a blank slate of a face, gray of skin with glowing yellow lights for irises, she thinks that maybe she may not have been ready after all.

The shock of seeing... whatever the fuck she is seeing makes her hesitate for a moment, and that moment gives the gray-skinned _thing_ in front of her the opportunity it means. _"Hostile detected_ ," It says in a flat, metallic voice through a mouth that doesn't move, and strikes her wrist with some sort of security baton.

Electricity courses through River's arm as soon as steel touches skin, chased by a numbing pain that makes her drop the gun and fall backwards to the ground. _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_ She looks over at Paladin Danse, praying that he'll be able to help her, only to find him fending off attackers of his own, cracking the butt of his rifle against one of the... robot's face? Are these robots? They're obviously made of metal and wire and rubber, but...

She doesn't have time to question further, because her attacker is climbing over the desk that has until now been her only line of defense. River makes a mad scramble for the baseball bat only to be cut off by another swing of the baton. "Shit!" she hisses. She's completely unarmed, against something that isn't going to be so easily winded by a punch to the plexus.

Wait. She's _not_ unarmed. She manages to roll away from the incoming strike and puts a few precious feet between her and the _whatever-the-fuck-it-is_ , digging through her pockets in the process. Her hand closes around what it is that she's searching for, and she pulls it out; the brass knuckles, old and tarnished but still heavy enough to do some damage and protect her hand from turning into the consistency of ground meat in the process. (She has _seen_ what punching metal does to a person's fist, and it's not pretty.) She slides the knuckles over her fingers and wraps her left hand around the palm grip and as soon as she hears the _bzzt_ of the shock baton arcing through the air, she ducks underneath her attacker's swing and whirls around to drive her newly formed fist into its facsimile of a face.

Three years of experience as a local boxer as well as the various self-defense classes she took all pay off as her attacker's head snaps backwards and it staggers. River sees the faint outline of the brass knuckles in its silicone cheek and allows herself to bask in a wave of pride for a moment. She hadn't boxed since before she was pregnant with Shaun, and the rush that came with a well-placed strike had been all but lost to her. Sure, she had managed to fight off the raiders in the museum, but back then she had still been a bit too swept up in, well, _everything_ to really appreciate her own skills, especially since her adversaries back then were actual flesh-and-blood humans.

Now, though? Now is different.

Her attacker, to its credit, recovers quickly; it rights itself and turns to face her, one of its eyes flickering slightly from the damage it had taken when she had hit it. _"Hit sustained. Assessing damage,"_ it uttered. River tensed up, shifting into a boxer's stance as she intently stared it down and waited for it to make a move. After a couple of seconds, her attacker's head tilts sharply to one side, regarding her with a cold, yellow stare. _"Assessment: you must die."_

Well, she can't claim it's not straightforward.

It moves to jab at her ribs with the baton, having clearly figured out that swinging attacks won't work, but River is ready for that. She steps to the side and grabs its outstretched wrist with her free hand, yanking its arm outwards and down and pressing her other elbow against _its_ elbow so that its arm is extended as far as it will go as she brings it to the ground. She raises her knee to strike at its wrist, forcing it to drop the baton and, if the sounds coming from its arm are any indication, doing some decent damage to its joints in the process.

 _"Damage sustained,"_ her attacker says, struggling against her grip.

"Yeah?" River says, driving her knee into the small of its back to keep it pinned as she pries the knuckles off her hand. "Well, you're about to sustain a fuck of a lot _more_ , buddy." She reaches for where the shock baton lies abandoned on the floor. "Assess _this_ ," she all but snarls through gritted teeth, and jabs the baton directly into the thin seam in the skin where neck met shoulder.

The thing twitches violently as electricity courses through it before falling still, a plume of smoke and the noxious odor of burnt rubber rising from its body. Panting heavily, River slowly pulls herself to her feet. The adrenaline is beginning to wear off, leaving a heavy feeling in her chest and an ache in her muscles. She turns to Paladin Danse, who has managed to deal with his own attackers, which are now lying on the floor in pieces. "What," River snaps, jabbing a finger at the corpse (for lack of a better word) of her attacker, "the _fuck_ was that?"

"That, civilian," Danse replies, kneeling down to examine his own half-pile of metal parts, "is an Institute synth."

River stares at him for a few seconds, mouth slightly agape. Then...

"No it fucking isn't."

Danse does a double take, his brows furrowing. "Excuse me?"

"I said, _no it fucking isn't_." River punctuates each word with another heated jab, as if pointing at the thing at her feet aggressively enough will make it make sense. "I've _met_ a synth, okay? I saved one from getting his head shot off by his friends. I know what they look like. I know they're indistinguishable from humans, and that's why people are so scared of them. That thing? _Is pretty fucking easily distinguished_."

Danse still doesn't answer her question, instead latching on to a single part of what she had said. "You stopped someone from eliminating a synth?"

River is a bit taken aback at how he speaks, sharp and incredulous. "Well, yes," she says. "The man was begging for his life, and he wasn't doing _anything_. He just wanted to get to some place called... God, I don't remember. Something ending with "hill?" What else was I supposed to do? Let them kill a man who wasn't even dangerous?"

Danse's mouth thins to a hard line. " _Every_ synth is dangerous," he says sternly. "I know you only recently emerged from your vault and that you're still adjusting to the change, but that's something you should know as soon as possible. They're tools meant to further the Institute's plans, nothing more." He either doesn't notice or ignores the way the faint clench of River's jaw as her hands instinctively clench into fists against her sides. "As for why these ones look different from the one you encountered, they're a different variant, meant for basic combat as opposed to infiltration and spying. They don't have the same level of intelligence as a human or even a more advanced synth, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous. From here on out, keep your guard up and check your corners before you move forward. Understood, citizen?"

"Y-yeah," River says, struggling to hide the slight tremor in her voice. "I get it."

* * *

The facility beyond that point is positively _crawling_ with synths, each one armed and aiming to kill as soon as River and Danse step through the door. It's a nightmare, the lack of inflection in their metallic voices and the way their unblinking luminescent eyes focus on her, followed moments later by the sights of their pistols. The further they venture into the darkened hallways of ArcJet, the tighter of a grip River holds on her gun. She leaves the baseball bat behind in the laboratory; it's done more to slow her down than it has helped her.

And if that's not fucking terrifying enough, there's also the goddamn _turrets_ that hang from the ceiling and fire upon anything that triggers their motion sensors, hostile or not. River tends to hang back behind Danse whenever they come across one of those, using his massive power armor as a makeshift while he takes care of them with a few precise shots from his laser rifle. "You know, I know they'd want to keep their projects under wraps, but this level of security is a bit much, don't you think?" she remarks after the third turret, attempting to inject some levity into their increasingly dire situation.

"Clearly it's not _enough_ , if these synths were able to get this far," Danse retorts. "Damn it, they've managed to compromise most of the facility. We'll be lucky if they haven't already gotten their hands on the transmitter by now."

"You... _do_ know what sarcasm is, right?"

"I do, but now isn't the time or place for that sort of thing." Danse gestured to a half-obscured door at the bottom of a short stairway that had once likely been a clean, pristine white, but had dulled into an uninviting gray over the decades. "See that? That door probably leads down into the primary testing chamber. We'll most likely find the transmitter down there. Cover me while we get this door cleared." Danse takes a few lumbering steps towards the debris blocking the door, but River beats him to it.

"How about you cover _me,_ mister metal-man-with-fancy-laser-and-actual-firearms-training," she says, pulling away a large chunk of wall plaster that has collapsed in front of the door, "and I'll put these muscles of mine to work."

Danse seems to be a little stymied be her initiative before he nods. "That's a smart plan. All right, I'll keep watch to make sure that we're not ambushed by synths. You get that rubble cleared." He turns and focused his attention on the hallway behind them.

It doesn't take long for River to clear away enough rubble for the two of them to reach the door. As soon as she moves the last piece of plaster, however, she pauses, a thought creeping forth to the front of her mind. "How deep is this testing chamber, again?"

"I'm not sure," Danse says. "Deep enough to test rocket engines, at least."

"Oh, _great_." Tight places and deep underground science areas. Her two _favorite_ places to be. _Maybe I'll get lucky and the deep-range transmitter will be literally right in front of our faces on the other side of this door._

 _No such luck._ Instead of the transmitter – because that would actually be fucking _convenient_ – there's a long stretch of dark and desolate hallway ahead. River lets Danse go first, lingering behind him slightly as they make their way down the hall. "Watch your footing," Danse tells her. "Looks like the power's out in this section."

"Y-yeah, looks like. Hey, you know tech; d'you think there's a flashlight on my Pip-Boy?"

"It's likely."

"Hrm." River fiddles around a bit with the knobs and buttons on the Pip-Boy until she finds a switch on the underside labeled LIGHT in faded white lettering. She switches it on, and the area around them is illuminated in a greenish glow that is frankly downright eerie. It does make it easier to see the debris and where the floor is weaker, allowing her to safely follow Danse into the main testing chamber.

Which is _big._ River gets a little woozy as she looks down from over the edge of the walkway down at the main floor, a good twenty feet or so below. In the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling, is what looks to be the booster jet of a rocket, and even that is much taller than she is. "Look at this place," Danse murmurs, awe tinting his voice even through the static of his helmet radio. "The scribes would have a field day in here." He heads down the hall towards what looks like the door to an elevator shaft. "Hm." His frown is practically audible. "The transmitter should be in the control room at the top of the core, but it looks like the elevators are dead. We'll have to keep heading down for now and find a way to get the facility's power back on."

River shoots him an incredulous stare through the lenses of her sunglasses. "You really think an elevator's going to still be active after two hundred years, no maintenance and an atomic bomb to the face?" She knew that as international conflicts escalated, more and more buildings were being built and wired with potential atomic devastation in mind, but atomic devastation plus a couple _centuries_ of being abandoned wouldn't look good for any building.

"You'd be surprised how many electrical systems managed to survive the initial blast," Danse says. "Most of these buildings were powered through fusion core technology. A few fusion cores could power a building like this for a very long time. The problem is if it's possible to turn them on at all. There's a chance that scavengers might have cleared this place out a while ago and taken the fusion cores with them."

" _Scavengers?_ So this transmitter might not even be here, then."

"It's... a possibility," Danse admits begrudgingly. "But a very small one. Scavengers only look for things they can easily identify as valuable. If they did manage to find the transmitter, they might not have viewed it as anything more than scrap metal. But that would have required them to enter the main core in the first place, and I find that hard to believe. And if anything, the presence of Institute synths indicates that the transmitter is still here; they wouldn't bother being here if they didn't know they would find something."

"Something like, oh, I don't know, the giant rocket dangling from the ceiling?"

"If that's what they were here for, there would be a lot more synth activity in this area," Danse points out. "Right now, it looks like we're alone. Keep your guard up, though; there's no telling with synths." They head down the stairs to the cold concrete of the main floor below. "There has to be a power backup somewhere," Danse says. "There's enough power in this building the keep the terminals upstairs active, which means that at the very least there's an emergency generator." He gestures to a doorway on the far side of the room. "Scout the maintenance area over there. I'll remain here and watch our backs."

"Yeah, okay, sure," River grumbles under her breath as she heads over to the narrow hallway leading into the maintenance room. "Because I totally know exactly what a backup power system looks like and how to turn one on. Because I am a technological fucking genius." She continues rambling even as she looks through the maintenance room itself for any hint of what she's supposed to be doing. "Is it because I was around before the war? Because living in a time period doesn't necessarily dictate an intimate knowledge of everything from that period, pal." She stumbles into a room with two generators and a terminal. "Oh. That's... actually really obvious, now that I look at it." It's worth a shot, anyway; poking at terminals has been pretty helpful to her so far.

Luckily _this_ terminal doesn't require her to go searching around for a password. A quick once-over at the green text that flickers into view indicates that Danse's observation about the building running on emergency power was correct. She activates the auxiliary power and takes a step back, watching the text scroll rapidly down the screen while the generators to her left whir to life. " _Engine core power restored,_ " a robotic voice tells her. " _Thermal engine fueled._ "

 _Well, there's that taken care of._ River turns to leave. _Just gotta tell Danse that the power's online and then we can–_

The sound of laser fire cuts her off

"Fuck!" River runs into the adjacent room, and through the window she can see Paladin Danse locked in combat with a barrage of synths; at least a dozen are swarming him on the main floor, and more are descending from the walkway. _Shit fuck fuck what do I do?_ She can't just rush out to join him; she'd be gunned down faster than she could say "Bob's your uncle." But she can't just sit there and let him be slaughtered, either. She has to do something, there _has_ to be a way she can help.

Her gaze falls across the panel in front of her, the flashing light of a big red button catching her eye. She doesn't know what it's for – the words below are worn away to the point of illegibility – but it wasn't flashing before now and she's just desperate enough to go for it. _You know what they say: any port in the storm_ , she thinks, and slams her hand down on the button.

" _Command accepted,_ " the robotic voice informs her. _"Thermal engine firing in five seconds."_

Ah, shit, that was a bad idea.

River turns to run back to the entrance, to let Danse know to get the hell out of dodge, only to see a shock baton flying directly at her face. She barely manages to duck in time; the baton ruffles her hair as it passes over her. "Ohhhh, fuck you so hard, buddy!" she snaps at the synth looming over her.

 _"Five_ ," the system computer says.

The synth stares back down at her with no emotion in the hollow yellow lights it has in place of irises. _"Engaging hostile,_ " it says, before swinging its baton at her again.

 _"Four."_

River dodges again, rolling to the ground as she does. "Yeah, well this hostile doesn't really want to be engaged with right now, so if you could take that fancy stick of yours and shove it straight up your _ass_ , that would be great!" she snaps, before aiming her pistol at the synth and unloading a clip into its chest.

 _"Three."_

The synth staggers and collapses to the ground, and River breathes a sigh of relief before getting to her feet. "Fucking hell," she mutters. "If everything could stop trying to kill me today, that would be _great._ "

 _"Two."_

River realizes the countdown is still going. "Shit!" she yelps. _Oh, fuck me, this was the worst idea, what was I thinking? Sure, River, press a big flashy red button without any idea what it does, that's not gonna go badly at all!_ She searches frantically for an off switch, a plug, anything she can turn or push or yank in order to stop the countdown.

 _"One."_

 _Fuck!_ "Paladin Danse!" she shouts, beating against the glass. "Danse, get out of there!" Distracted by the synths bearing down on him, he doesn't hear her. River bolts towards the entrance of the maintenance hallway, adrenaline coursing through her system like a bolt of electricity. She skids to a halt at the doorway. "Paladin Da—"

 _"Engine firing."_

The room is set alight in an inferno of engine fire. River yelps and throws her arms up to protect her face from the wave of searing heat that blasts her as the white-hot pillar descends from the core, consuming synth and paladin alike. The few seconds that the rocket is on feels like an eternity, and when everything finally goes quiet and River dares to lower her arms, the floor is covered in a layer of still-glowing embers and still-twitching synth corpses. _"Test firing completed with an efficiency rating of 96.7 percent,"_ the system computers inform her over the intercom system.

Well, it was efficient at something. As River's gaze sweeps over the burnt remains of the synths, she spots a familiar figure kneeling down amid the carnage. Upon closer inspection, she sees that it is in fact Paladin Danse, helmetless and covered in soot but still alive, thank God. "Paladin Danse!" she cries out, running towards him.

The first thought that runs through her mind as she approaches is _oh, hey, he has hair._ He'd taken off his helmet and in the process had removed his cowl as well, revealing a head full of thick, dark hair. Honestly, part of her had assumed that he was bald underneath the cowl. She's glad to see she was wrong; the hair suits him.

The _second_ thought that runs through her mind is the realization that he's panting heavily, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and that parts of his armor were still glowing from the heat. "Holy _shit,_ Danse, are you all right?" River exclaims.

Danse lets out a pained groan as he struggles to stand. "Got... _cooked_ by those flames," he rasps, "and my HUD's completely fried." He gestures to the helmet in his hand. "But thanks to my power armor, I'm still in one piece."

"Okay. Okay. Ohhhhkay." River's legs feel like they have turned to rubber. The tension in her body leaves her in the form of words tumbling from her lips. "Fuck, I'm so sorry, I didn't know that button was going to do the thing that it did, I just saw the synths and how many there were and I _panicked_ and I tried to get to you but this synth had reached me and dear sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, I have _no_ idea what I am doing anymore." Did she ever?

Danse is on his feet now, donning his cowl and helmet once more. "At ease, citizen," he tells her.

"River."

"What?"

"My... my name. River Yu Samson. That's my name. Sorry, it's just that you keep calling me stuff like 'citizen' and 'civilian,' and I realized I never told you what my name is, so..." The more River talks, the more aware she is of how ridiculous she sounds, and she eventually trails off, staring at the ground for a couple of seconds before saying, "I'm really sorry about your helmet."

Dance shakes his head slightly. "It's not a concern right now. I can still see well enough to shoot, and I have a good idea of what percentage the core's at. I'll be able to take a look at the HUD and see if it's repairable back at the station. For now, the important thing is that we're still alive – and that we have a way to get to the transmitter. Let's go."

River supposes their situation _could_ be a lot worse. Danse is right; they're both alive and one step closer to their goal. It does little to sooth the harsh, frantic rhythm of her heartbeat, but it's something. However, it's soon replaced be another fear.

The two of them head towards the elevator door. The "up" button resists a little when River presses it, and the loud grinding that echoes from within the elevator shaft does little to ease her sense of trepidation. When the doors finally open, she has to force herself to step inside. The matter is certainly not helped by the way the elevator groans when Danse follows after her, making an already small space even smaller with his presence. River huddles against the farthest corner of the metal box, drawing her arms around her in order to increase the amount of free space.

She's not exactly discreet about it, and Danse notices her clear discomfort. "Is something wrong, citizen?" he asks.

"Oh, you know," she mutters, keeping her gaze transfixed to the floor. "When you spend two centuries in an ice box, you tend to appreciate the value of a little wiggle room."

It takes Danse a second to understand what she's getting at. "I see," he says. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were claustrophobic."

River shrugs. "Unless there was a perfectly accessible flight of stairs up to the transmitter and you just wanted to be a lazy bastard, there wasn't anything you could have done about it," she points out. "Just gotta wait it out."

Thankfully, she doesn't have to wait long. _Ding_. The elevator door opens, and despite her urgent need to leave the elevator right fucking now, please and thank you, River lets Danse go first. It turns out that there actually isn't a perfectly accessible flight of stairs; they're further up than they were when they first entered the testing core, and the walkway connecting the two flights is long gone. Not that knowing that makes her feel much better about it, mind.

There are even more synths waiting for them in the observation room at the very top of the walkway; at this point it feels like the Institute is just throwing them at her and Danse in bulk. They manage to clear the room easily enough, with Danse providing most of the heavy fire while River takes down the ones who get too close. "I hope that's the last of them," Danse says as the last synth falls. He looks around the room. "Damn it, I don't see the device anywhere. This was what I was worried about. Fan out and check the synth remains."

River frowns. "Right. Sure. Because I definitely know what the transmitter looks like. That is a thing I am knowledgeable about."

"From Haylen's description of it, it should be a rectangular device with a red frequency knob of the side." Danse is already examining the closest synth body, searching through what's left of it after River put a few holes in it.

Or a few dozen. She hasn't really been diligent on the matter of ammo conservation.

Biting back a retort about how what he's told her isn't exactly a whole lot to go on, River begins to search the remains of their assailants for anything that might give her any clues on the transmitter's location. _Rectangle with red knob, rectangle with red knob..._ Somehow, searching the bodies of synths is even more unnerving than looting the corpses back in Concord had been. It's the faces, she determines, the silicone masks that betray no hint of emotion or humanity, even in death. It's like searching a pile of store mannequins.

She find the rectangle with the red knob near the back of the room, clutched in the hands of one of the dead synths. She pries the metal fingers apart and lives the device up for Danse to see. "This it?"

Danse nods. "Yes, it is." He gets to his feet. "Now, let's get out of here. We'll take the service elevator to the surface. I know you're uncomfortable with the confined space, but..."

"Either way we go, it's an elevator ride out of here," River points out. "We can either take the one behind us, or the one in front of us. I'd prefer the one that doesn't involve an hour of backtracking through the upper floors."

"Excellent." Danse turns and heads towards the elevator. "Let's go, then."

River follows suit, casting one last, lingering glance at the synthetic corpses before they leave.

* * *

"Well, that could have gone smoother. But, mission accomplished."

River and Danse are in the open once more. The sun has long since dipped down below the horizon, leaving the ArcJet building little more than a silhouette against a dark blue backdrop. Both Danse's helmet light and River's Pip-Boy reveal their immediate surroundings, including a small pile of waste barrels that River takes great care to avoid. "Honestly," she says, keeping the corner of her eye trained on her Geiger counter, "I'm at the point where I count every day that I'm not eaten a 'success.' That went about as smooth as it _could_ have gone, circumstances considered."

"Not necessarily. That sweep was sloppy, and we were caught unprepared for hostile engagement more that once. However, your extra gun gave us the advantage we needed. I must admit, I'm fairly impressed. When you told me you were a boxer, I was expecting some level of physical strength from you, but not the skills to back it up."

"Most of what I know does primarily involve just punching things," River admits. "But I took some self-defense classes when I moved to Boston, back before the bombs. I never thought I'd put those lesson to use like _this,_ though." Against muggers and people accusing her of being a Chinese spy, sure. Against androids? Nope.

"Well, you performed better than I had anticipated. It's a refreshing change to work with a civilian who can follow orders properly. That being said," Danse continues, "I believe we have two important matters to discuss."

"What matters?" The transmitter's been retrieved, and River's still has a bit of ammo on her, plus what she'll inevitably end up grabbing from the police station when she goes to pick up Dogmeat.

"For starters, I'd like to compensate you for your assistance during this operation." Before River even has a chance to muster up the token polite refusal, Danse has handed her his gun. "I think you'll find this weapon useful. It's my own personal modification of the standard Brotherhood laser rifle. I know you won't have any difficulties in close-quarters combat, but I saw how the synths armed with pistols were giving you a bit of difficulties. This should help with that."

River gawks at him. "You're... you're giving me your _gun_? Don't you _need_ this?"

Danse shakes his head. "It's not the only weapon at my disposal. Brotherhood soldiers always carry a backup."

"Oh." River looks down at the rifle. She thinks of the assembly plant in Lexington, of how it was impossible to get close enough to deal with the raiders. Maybe this will give her the advantage she needs, just as he says it will. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now, as far as the second matter, I wanted to make you a proposal. We had a lot thrown at us back there. The op could have ended in disaster, but your initiative in the engine core kept things from becoming significantly worse. You have the potential to do a lot of good for the Commonwealth, Samson, and the way I see it is that you've got a choice. You could spend the rest of your life wandering from place to place, trading an extra hand for a meager reward... or you could join the Brotherhood of Steel, and make your mark on the world. So," Danse says, "what do you say?"

River gawks at him. "I'm... I'm not a soldier, Danse," she says quietly. "M-my husband... Nate... _he_ was. I was boxer and then I was a housewife. I was born in the year twenty-fifty-two, I grew up in a world of cars and television and Nuka-Cola commercials, I don't have _any_ idea what's going on anymore! I feel like I've stepped onto another planet."

"But you were still able to handle yourself when faced with an unfamiliar situation," Danse rebuts. "You showed a remarkable ability to adapt quickly to the circumstances and adjust accordingly." He pauses for a second. "I understand your hesitation. It's a big choice to make. But I urge you to at least consider it. Your knowledge of life before the war outclasses any of our scribes simply through virtue of having experienced it, and you would be a valuable asset to the Brotherhood. In return, you'll have access to Brotherhood resources, and your own personal suit of power armor. Most importantly, you'd have the Brotherhood at your back, ready to spill its own blood to keep you alive."

River hesitates still, mind swarming. She can't believe what she's hearing; this man is looking at her, a short and terrified woman with a set of brass knuckles and looted armor, and thinking that she'll make a good member of the Brotherhood of Steel. She doesn't even know what the Brotherhood of Steel is, not really, not beyond what little Danse has told her.

But...

The Brotherhood of Steel is working to gain a better understanding of what caused the world to end, so as to ensure it doesn't happen again. That's what he told her. And she reckons that there are very few people out there who understand the importance of not letting the world blow up a second time as well as she does. It's a good goal, a _noble_ goal. Of course, some of the things Danse said about synths sounded somewhat _familiar_ , but God knows he wouldn't be the first person to twist a generally good ideology to suit his prejudices. And... and she _needs_ some sort of stability in her life as she figures things out. She has Sanctuary, yes, but the weight of the memories that loom overhead are still making things difficult. And while Preston is a dear friend, he has responsibilities of his own, and River can't ask him to hold her hand while she runs about adjusting. Paladin Danse, however, is offering.

But River has responsibilities, too. She promised Preston that she'd help Rita and Marcus, and she promised Rita and Marcus that she'd clear out Corvega. Sanctuary is doing better, but it needs a steady supply of food, and who knows what will happen if the generator and purifier don't work out. And... and...

 _Shaun..._

"I'm not out here for no reason, Paladin." Her voice is flat; she can't afford to let it waver even the slightest because she knows that it won't stop at just wavering. "Some bald-headed son of a bitch shot my husband and kidnapped my baby boy right in front of me." She can't meet his gaze, so she settles for staring intently at his helmet. "If I join the Brotherhood, will it help me find my son?"

Paladin Danse gazes back at her for a few seconds before answering. "I can't promise anything," he says. "But the Brotherhood has resources that others in the wasteland don't. Resources that could prove to be beneficial to your search."

Well, it's better than nothing.

"All right," River says. "I'm in."

* * *

 **A/N - More facts! Actually interesting ones this time around, too.**

 **FFFM #21: While I probably botched it in my description, the move that River uses to take out the first synth that attacks her was drawn from a self-defense technique described in a Youtube mirror of what looked to be some sort of TV program from one of the educational channels. Dunno how legit it is as a real-life technique, but at the very least it worked out well enough for this fictional action sequence.**

 **FFFM #22: I actually mixed up the order of events on my first draft of this chapter. I had the elevator ride in between the main offices and the engine core before I realized that there wasn't actually an elevator there and the two sections were connected by just a door. At first I was like "eh fuck it they won't care" but as I progressed I realized that the power being off in the lower floors meant that there couldn't be an elevator where I put it. Damn it. Much rearranging of passages was had that day.**

 **FFFM #23: Punching things into pieces is fun in Fallout 4. Become a punchmaster archetype today.**


End file.
